Gingrich and Perry not ending up on the ballot is the fault of nobody else but themselves. If they actually had a plan, or a brain, they would have been demanding signatures in advance. However, because they didn’t think about Virginia, they torpedoed their own chance of being a possible win in those primaries. As much as I dislike Romney, it’s sad when he actually has enough of a brain to call up potential voters in Virginia while Newt and Perry don’t. If Newt had any brain in his skull, he should have actually bothered throwing support behind Santorum with an endorsement earlier on.
The part that reeks the most is the fact that Gingrich and Perry almost practically set up Romney to win with their own failure to plan, or planning to fail, depending on how it’s said.
The officials waited until Romney submitted his petitions before they set the numeric standard for exemption. It was just below the number Romney's people submitted.
WOW!
That's the kind of koinkydink that will, of course, ultimately send somebody to prison.
The state law standard was 10,000 signatures. The practice was no validation.
The new rule, the 15,000 signature exception, was established AFTER the process of collecting signatures.
The consequence is this, the Republican party said it's running a primary. Instead they are running nominating petition contests.
If they want to do that there's a law already there for it, or for a caucus. We, the voters can deal with the party geeks on that basis if they want but they should announce the way we are going to select candidates, not play tricky dicky wicky when it's too late. Now they've expanded the primary internal nomination process to the point where it can be unfairly manipulated to destroy the primary just as if the only thing that counts in this state anymore are the choices of random people stopped in parking lots.
That's what we had back in the bad old days when the Byrd Machine ruled Virginia politics with an iron hand.
It's so undemocratic it has become UNAMERICAN! It's advocates should be tarred, feathered, and ridden out of the state on a rail.