I don’t like the 15K ‘pass,’ either, but it was having well under the required 10K verifiable signatures that disqualified Perry and Gingrich. All the worse assuming their people knew that 15K would bypass the check.
Any candidate for any office knows to get half again as many signatures as are required. Perry and Gingrich just started their signature gathering too late.
Maybe we should demand the RPV cross-check all the Romney/Paul petitions and see if they can’t eliminate 7-10K signatures. Then we’d have no need for a primary at all!
I am curious to know when the VA GOP invented the 15K Safe Harbor rule. The letter from the VA GOP is undated (which is itself curious). The PDF file contains a hidden creation date of 12/21/2011.