Posted on 12/24/2011 8:29:18 PM PST by no dems
Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich's campaign attacked Virginia's GOP primary election system on Saturday for keeping him off the state's March 6 Super Tuesday ballot. The state party said that Gingrich, who lives in Virginia, had failed to submit the required 10,000 signatures to appear on the ballot. The Gingrich campaign responded that "only a failed system" would disqualify Gingrich and other candidates. It said Gingrich would pursue an aggressive write-in campaign, although state law prohibits write-ins on primary ballots.
Gingrich campaign director Michael Krull said in a statement: "We will work with the Republican Party of Virginia to pursue an aggressive write-in campaign to make sure that all the voters of Virginia are able to vote for the candidate of their choice." However, state law says this about primary write-in campaigns: "No write-in shall be permitted on ballots in primary elections."
Forty-six delegates will be at stake in Virginia's Super Tuesday primary. That's a small fraction of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination. But they could prove pivotal in a close race, especially for a candidate like Gingrich, who expects to do well in Southern contests. Gingrich already missed the deadline to appear on the ballot in Missouri's Feb. 7 primary, though he insists it doesn't matter because the state awards delegates based not on the primary but on a Republican caucus held in March. "After verification, RPV has determined that Newt Gingrich did not submit required 10k signatures and has not qualified for the VA primary," the party announced early Saturday on its Twitter feed.
Gingrich had been concerned enough to deliver his signatures personally. Rushing from New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Jan. 10, he held a rally Wednesday in Arlington, Va., where volunteers asked supporters to sign petitions.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
“yep, all Newt’s fault..”
Yes, that is right, it was all Newt’s fault. No conspiracy here, just a bad lack of organizational abilities, which has always been Newt’s achilles heel. Great on ideas, lousy on the mechanics of a campaign.
I don’t know that it was ever verified, but there were reports that one of Gingrich’s petition gatherers was not qualified. That would have thrown out those entire petitions.
Virginia Republicans have a choice between Mittens and the Fruitcake. If you think that is acceptable, then your values differ from mine.
What the Virginia GOP did favors those with a long-term organization and lots of cash.
It doesn’t matter what I think is “acceptable”. In the 2008 election, my choices were Obama or McCain. I didn’t like that either — but that didn’t change reality.
I’ll be happy if the candidates can work with the RPV and get on the ballot, although I don’t see a legal way for that to happen, so I’m not holding my breath.
But reality is that there was a ballot process, and all but two candidates failed to meet the requirements of that process, while the two I dislike the most managed to do it.
BTW, If I was Ron Paul, I’d be fighting to get other candidates on as well. The rules for Virginia this year are that if a candidate wins 50%, they get all the delegates. If less than 50%, thety are assigned proportionately.
So it won’t help Ron if he gets 45% of a two-man contest. If there were three, and he got 20%, he’d end up with more delegates. (There is no way you’ll get enough people to vote Paul as a “protest” to get him above 50% — if this collection process showed anything, it’s that Romney has a strong campaign operation here in Virginia).
All the actual facts you state are wrong or unsupported by evidence, and your “link” is another thread here with speculation.
Romney did NOT turn in his signatures a month ago. They didn’t set the 15,000 rule AFTER he turned in his signatures.
You of course can believe anything you read on the internet, but belief is not reality, and if you want to know the truth rather than have a good rant I would recommend waiting until the RPV answers questions and puts out information, which isn’t likely to happen quickly since we are in the middle of the holidays.
“All the actual facts you state are wrong or unsupported by evidence, and your “link” is another thread here with speculation.”
You say they are unsupported facts yet you appeal to information from the GOPVA to confirm...lol.
That’s rich. I wonder whey they didn’t put a date on that letter that is stamped electronically 12/21/11 ?
Now your other claim needs more support. You state that the facts given are “wrong”.
Go ahead...go at it and prove that point.
GOPVa’s silence speaks volumes. They want Romney and they are pulling all of the strings out, including these corrupt machinations to delete viable candidates from the ballot.
Waiting for your proof.
You post complete conjecture unsupported by any evidence, and when I point it out, you want ME to prove that your speculation is false?
But you keep making specific statements of facts that are untrue. For example, the “letter” is not stamped electronically with anything. There is a pdf of a scanned letter they put on on their web site, and they SCANNED the letter on 12/21.
My HOA put our architectural request form online. The date on that PDF has no relationship to the date the form was created.
That’s like taking the time of my posting, and claiming that all the ideas I wrote in this post were dreamed up at precisely the time specified in the posting timestamp.
the RPV is the official source for information about what the RPV is doing in Virginia. If you have evidence that the RPV is lying about what they are doing, it is up to you to find facts to support your contention.
RPV’s silence speaks nothing. They issued their findings when they finished looking at the signatures. They all went home for Christmas. Maybe they are also involved in the funeral arrangements for the volunteer who died in a car accident driving home from the verification.
The official certification I believe is due today to the state board of elections.
BTW, I am happy they are not talking. All the speculation is just speculation. Tryin to answer all the conspiracy theorists is a fools errand. I’m sure the actual candidate campaigns are in discussions with the RPV, and if something comes of that, we will all hear about it. Until then, it does them no good to discuss the matter.
But what could they say to people who think the date a letter is scanned to put online is the date the letter was written, or who think the date a letter was written is the date a decision was made, or who think that candidates are “grandfathered” in when there has been NO statement to that effect from the RPV and there is no provision for it in the law?
And the RPV certainly can’t address the absurd attacks on Governor McDonnell.
Is this any way to choose a presidential candidate?:
First, the Virginia State board of elections issued four pages of instructions to candidates in May.Got that? May. Here are the instructions. Here is the section, FROM THE STATE Board of Elections (NOT THE RPV) about petitions:
Circulate on or after July 1, 2011;OK, these are the various pieces of misinformation corrected, with references, so far: That the signature requirement is optional, that addresses were not required by the state and the RPV made that up, that the RPV made up the reference to 15,000 signatures, and that the candidates just learned of these rules recently.Must be on the form prescribed by the State Board of Elections (copy enclosed). It is suggested that the candidate or group complete the top portion of the petition form and then print or photocopy as many copies of the form as needed. The form may not be altered in any way.
Must be signed by not less than 10,000 qualified voters in Virginia, including at least 400 qualified voters from each of Virginia's eleven congressional districts, who attest that they intend to participate in the primary of the same political party as the candidate named on the petition. Because many people who are not registered to vote will sign a petition, it is recommended that 15,000 - 20,000 signatures be obtained with at least 700 signatures from each congressional district.
Must provide the true signature, the printed full name and the full resident address of each qualified voter and the date each signed the petition.
Although the last four digits of the social security number is requested, it is not mandatory that it be provided.
Next:
On Tuesday, Romney was the first candidate to file his petitions with the state. Lt. Governor Bill Bolling personality delivered Romney’s 16,026 signatures to the state Board of Elections. The only other candidate to have over 15,000 signatures was Ron Paul.This corrects the misinformation that Romney submitted his signatures in November. Also, it corrects a minor error made that Ron Paul had fewer than 15,000 signatures (I thought it was 14,000, but apparently he turned in more than 15,000).
This blog entry also has some very GOOD arguments against what happened (as opposed to some of the arguments people have been using here -- I know some have used these arguments as well here):
For example, it is silly to take the VBE "guidance" to collect 15,000 signatures, and make it into a de-facto "we'll accept your signatures if you have 15,000". Of course, many here argue that we shouldn't check the signatures of Gingrich and Perry, so they can't object to the 15,000 rule, except to claim it should be 10,000. But it is reasonable for a campaign to argue that Romney and Paul need to have their signatures checked the same was as Gingrich and Perry did.
Another interesting piece of information:
In addition to that, I learned today that each signature is verified by only one person, with very minimal instruction, just two days before Christmas. Republican volunteers work late into the night to verify signatures. Who knows how good their concentration was in the early morning hours of Christmas Eve. The republican volunteer goes through a petition and strikes whatever number of signatures they deem not to be valid. No one verifies what any volunteer has done with his/her stack of petitions. What happens if the volunteer supports a candidate other than the one on the petition they’re examining? Might that volunteer nitpick every page of signatures and throw out many more than necessary? No one would ever know because no one checks.I'm not going to FAULT the volunteers, or credit the insinuation that they might purposely reject signatures to help their candidate. If a campaign cared, they could send their own volunteers, and ask that their pages be checked with their volunteers present. The reason only one volunteer was used was that there weren't enough volunteers to do more -- even with one volunteer per petition, it took them until the wee hours of the morning.
But this is a good sign that the process was flawed, and needs to be fixed.
Last thing, from the SBE guidance again:
A statement, signed by the candidate under oath, setting forth his name and the number of signatures on the petitions in the sealed containers must be attached to the first container. See Suggested Oath on the next page.If a candidate misstated the number of signatures, and was caught, they would be guilty of LYING UNDER OATH. If they knew they had collected false signatures, their oath would be false, and they would be guilty of perjury. So I really don't think we can assume candidates would lie about how many signatures they were submitting.
“For example, it is silly to take the VBE “guidance” to collect 15,000 signatures”
There is no “guidance” to collect 15,000 signatures.
For evidence I will refer you to CharlesWayneCT’s post regarding the State Bd of Elections.
“Because many people who are not registered to vote will sign a petition, it is recommended that 15,000 - 20,000 signatures be obtained with at least 700 signatures from each congressional district.”
You will note that your deflection from the VAGOP’s old and new rules is a huge FAIL. There is nothing here that changes the facts of what transpired within the VaGop in what you posted. It is a simple “RECOMMENDATION”.
Got it?
The law states that 10,000 is the number.
In elections in 08 and 10 and a few prior that that, the rule set forth by the VaGop clearly stated 10,000 was the number of signatures required.
No review of signatures has happened with the 10,000 being the number required.
Now, there is a letter out from VaGop stating that 15,000 is the new number to avoid review.
You can deny this all you want. But it is what happened and it is the truth. They changed the rules late in the game, to delete both Gingrich and Perry from the ballot.
End of story, unless you have additional information that negates what has happened.
I’m not sure why you think that a “recommendation” is not “guidance”. If it makes you feel better, substitute “recommendation” where I use the word “guidance”.
Since that was part of my post where I was trying to agree with your angst over the current rules, I cannot fathom why you chose to attack THAT part.
You still haven’t shown actual evidence that there were old and new “rules”, not that I ever said there was or wasn’t, just that the LAW itself has been in effect for a while now. You can keep shifting the argument around, but it doesn’t help to understand what you are arguing.
The law states that you need 10,000 signatures. The VBE, not the RPV, issued a direction to all the campaigns back in MAY telling them they needed 10,000 signatures, and recommending they get 15,000 to 20,000. The RPV didn’t make up the rule that you needed 10,000 signatures. The VBE also said that addresses were required — again, that wasn’t something the RPV made up, that was in the VBE memo to all the candidates.
If the VBE was wrong to say addresses were needed, that was the fault of the VBE, not the RPV.
The RPV, in order to try to make the process a LITTLE EASIER for the candidates, decided that if you submitted the VBE-recommended 15,000 signatures, they would ASSUME the signatures were correct, and wouldn’t check them.
Oddly, many here are arguing that the RPV should have accepted 10,000 signatures without checking them, but are upset that they let 15,000 signatures go unchecked. I think it’s a good argument that all signatures should be checked, but if you are arguing that NO signatures should be checked, it’s hard to take seriously a complaint that at 15,000, they stop checking the signatures. It’s a DIFFERENT argument.
If your argument is that the RPV failed to check signatures before, so it’s unfair to check them now, that is a stupid argument. We didn’t check voter ID before, and now conservatives are pushing voter ID laws around the country. If the law says we are supposed to submit signatures for actual registered voters, and that the RPV is responsible for verifying the information, then there is nothing WRONG with the RPV taking that job seriously.
If they WANT to take it unseriously at this point, that will work out well for our candidates, but it is absurd to attack them for taking the law seriously. It wasn’t a surprise, the VBE gave the candidates the rules back in May — 10,000 VALID signatures. If the candidates were hoping nobody would check the signatures, they may have had some reason to hope that, but no legal basis for expecting it.
Now, rather than continuing to just assert your same assumptions again and again, why don’t you find an actual link to the 2008 RPV rules that say that they will NOT verify the signatures? I’ve seen several people say that, but I’ve not seen any actual evidence for it.
“I’m not sure why you think that a “recommendation” is not “guidance”. If it makes you feel better, substitute “recommendation” where I use the word “guidance”.”
Guidance has an authoritative implication. This was not authoritative, it was a recommendation. The law states, 10K
“Since that was part of my post where I was trying to agree with your angst over the current rules, I cannot fathom why you chose to attack THAT part.”
Because “guidance” was an incorrect word to use and words have meanings.
“You still haven’t shown actual evidence that there were old and new “rules”, not that I ever said there was or wasn’t, just that the LAW itself has been in effect for a while now. You can keep shifting the argument around, but it doesn’t help to understand what you are arguing.”
I find you sophistry novice and without points. It is common knowledge tht there was no rule set forth to hit any other number than 10,000...until the most recent change. There is a widely viewed letter available. But, I’m sure you’ve seen it.
“The law states that you need 10,000 signatures. The VBE, not the RPV, issued a direction to all the campaigns back in MAY telling them they needed 10,000 signatures, and recommending they get 15,000 to 20,000.”
This passage in absolutely irrelevant as we are not discussing the Bd of Elections, they state 10,000 as their number and the VaGOP as practice used the 10,000 number with no review.
“Oddly, many here are arguing that the RPV should have accepted 10,000 signatures without checking them”
No that is not my argument. That is the odd practice of the VaGOP...for many elections up to and including this one, until very recently, when they changed it.
“If your argument is that the RPV failed to check signatures before, so it’s unfair to check them now, that is a stupid argument.”
The above is another example of you novice sophistry and inventing arguments that people, and I in this case, haven’t made.
"Common Knowledge" seems to be your euphemism for "I have no evidence, but everybody "knows" it. Since it was almost totally UNKNOWN to most people anything about Virginia's ballot process before Friday, the assertion of "common knowledge" is just lazy.
The "widely viewed letter" simply says how the RPV was going to meet it's requirements under the law. There was no "rule" about 15,000 vs 10,000 vs any other number; I guess I should argue that "rule" isn't the right word because it has a specific meaning, and the word that better applies here is "implementation".
The RPV has a duty under the law to verify the signatures are valid, meaning they are real signatures for registered voters, and that they are on the correct forms and there are enough of them from each congressional district. The VBE requirements which nobody protested when they were given to the campaigns in May say that addresses are required, so the RPV checked that addresses were filled out.
In doing their "verification", the RPV decided that if there were more than 15,000 signatures given, they would simply assume that no more than 5000 of those signatures would be found to be invalid, and if there were 600 for each district, that no more than 200 of them would be found to be improper. So rather than take the time to check every signature, they would simply waive the requirement.
But the RULE is the same -- 10,000 valid signatures, 400 from each district. The RPV could have instead decided to implement their verification by doing a random check of the first 100 signatures from each district, and if the average rejection projected to the total would yield 10,000/400, they would stop and accept the results.
Or they could have chosen to implement the rule by not checking anything at all, like you assert without evidence that they have done in the past. Again, I don't know they did check before, I only know it makes no sense NOT to check, but not knowing isn't the same as knowing they didn't, and I've seen no authoritative pronouncement from responsible people from 2008 that there was no checking.
I will note another part of their "implementation" was that they had a single volunteer for each petition. That again wasn't a "rule", it was just how they chose to implement the rule that they had to check the signatures. That was another bad implementation, but it would be absurd to say that having "one volunteer" meant they "changed the rules" since you believe in 2008 they had "zero volunteers".
Just as if they decided to have two volunteers working together, that also wouldn't "change the rule".
Now you can waste your time telling me why "rule" is the PERFECT word for what you wanted to say -- or you could address the actual point, which is that the law they were implementing this year is identical to the law they implemented in 2008, and Gingrich and Perry failed to meet the requirements of the law.
If you want to argue that they shouldn't have CHECKED, go ahead, but you claim you don't want to argue that. Your assertion that they "changed the rules" seems to precisely be an argument about not checking now because they didn't check before.
But OK, you aren't saying that. So you believe they SHOULD check the signatures, but that they should have checked ALL the signatures.
Gingrich and Perry are still out. They had their signatures checked, and failed to meet the legal requirement. So, is your entire argument that the RPV needs to check the Paul and Romney signatures, in the hopes one or both of them will be removed as well?
If so, I commend you. That is a rational, reasonable request. But that's not what anybody I see here at FR is arguing for. They want to change the law so Gingrich can be on the ballot. They want to throw Bill Bolling in prison for some reason. They want to claim that Romney filed his petitions in November, and then the RPV "changed the rules". I have shown that to be false two ways -- Romney gave his petitions last week, and the RPV never changed "the rules", and their implementation was known prior to Romney providing signatures.
And whether you like guidance or suggestion, the VBE made it clear that candidates should collect a LOT more signatures than necessary, because signatures get tossed all the time. Romney and Paul followed their "recommendations", went with the advice of the SBE, took the counsel of the organization that had historical knowledge. You want to object to the use of the word "adice" or "counsel"? I know they are synonyms to "guidance" and you really dislike that word.
Guidance has an authoritative implication
I suppose it could under specific usages, although it's definition doesn't assert that. "Legal Guidance" would be the term for authoritative statements about actions. Guidance is giving counseling, direction, or "something that provides direction or advice as to a decision or course of action".
I used it in it's "advise" meaning, you took it more as a "provides direction" meaning. Rather than assume something I was clearly not saying, you'd have been better to ask what meaning I was using, but you can make a big deal about anything you want, it's just not helpful.
All of that contorting and twisting of truth into bullshit?
I wish I were intellectually lazy, but the truth is I’m just tired of reading your lies... lol.
So, I can’t respond since I didn’t read it.
It must be tough supporting Romney and not being able to freely admit it....Oh, I know you supported Palin....lmao right.
If they used a computer to compare the signatures, I would bet money that the programmers were diligent enough (especially if they like getting paid) to account for alternate spellings of all parts of a standard US mailing address. It’s really not that complicated.
I don’t know if you are intellectually lazy, or just intellectually incapable.
You aren’t a mind-reader, and your absurd false claims about things don’t suggest a higher intellectual capacity.
I’m sorry that you can’t admit you support Romney, or whatever it was you were trying to whine about at the end.
You can have the last word.
Thank you for the info. So Newt had a buffer of 1,000. Hm ... I can easily forgive Newt for assuming that was a large enough buffer. I will protest vote against McRomney. What choice do I have?
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