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 ...
Well, let's not get dramatic about it. There's nothing stopping people from voting for Gingrich as a write-in candidate.
Murkowski actually won as a write-in candidate in AK.
And, regardless, Newt looks like a chump by blaming the system. The Virginia GOP has been talking for months about the campaigns and the signature requirements.
To be honest, I do think the RVP will somehow find a way to turn a blind eye and put the candidates on the ballot. But that doesn't mean that I think it's a good thing that Newt attacks the system.
Does anyone really believe that if Newt had made the ballot, but others hadn't, that he would have claimed the system was rigged and stupid or whatever? I don't.
Nope. He'd be out there claiming "too bad, they should have worked harder and started earlier, the process is what it is and blah blah blah . . ."
The whole point of the Virginia process is to keep it from being a stupid process such as “liking” people on Facebook.
It is designed to make the primary ballot controlled by GOP primary voters. It’s not just signatures of any body with a pulse that counts.
I think Newt should abandoan any route that focuses on how his view that the system was to blame here. That is for another day.
If he wants to make progress in Virginia, simply focus on an aggressive write-in campaign, as his VA manager said they would do. There is nothing stopping people from voting for Newt or anyone else who didn’t make the ballot.
VA law excludes write-in ballots in the primaries. We can do that in a general election only.
Hopefully by Tuesday everyone will have adjusted to this reality, and the Gingrich (and Perry) campaigns will have learned a valuable if not costly lesson about the ground game in all 50 states. It’s still early in the process, and there are 10 other primaries that day.
There’s talk that we VA Gingrich people can vote for Paul to keep the delegates from Romney, under the theory that Paul won’t make it all the way to Tampa. Our own little “Operation Chaos.” But at this stage of the primary season ‘08, who thought Barack would take the nomination from Hillary? Not sure I’d want to ‘go there.’
Further ...
From the article, here’s part of the problem: 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...”
The director of a national presidential campaign should know the election laws (or have a(n) advisor(s) who know(s) the election laws) in each of the states. The director of a national presidential campaign should NOT be talking (in a CYA fashion) about a write-in campaign when it’s not allowed in the state where he’s complaining about not having qualified to be on the primary ballot.
I believe the signatures have to be from registered voters, but they neither have to be nor can be verified as being from GOP voters, since there is no party registration in VA.
That speaks to the danger of a write-in option on a primary ballot. There is nothing stopping Democrats from organizing to write in the candidate of their choice on our ballot.
“Gingrich is not the TEA party favorite candidate, that is nothing but propaganda.”
Most polling shows Gingrich with massive Tea Party support. More than the other candidates.
As far as Virginia is concerned, I don’t recall any candidates in 08 not qualifying. Tancredo, Hunter...I’m assuming they qualified, yet Perry and Gingrich don’t ?
I’m going to take a hunch and guess that the Va GOP changed the rules significantly.
It will be interesting if they changed the qualifying rules from the last election.
Tancredo had dropped out by then, and Hunter did not qualify.
Elsewhere on here today was posted a thread (sorry, I don’t have the link) about RPV being sued for failing to properly scrutinize a candidate’s petitions for the recent (11/11) general elections. You think that wouldn’t alter how things are done? Were the Gingrich/Perry campaigns just turning in slapdash petitions assuming they wouldn’t be scrutinized?
It remains the case that most careful campaigns for any office anywhere collect double what they need. A candidate for POTUS should surely be able to get that many. This isn’t that huge a hurdle had the campaigns put in any effort at all.
Please note that VA had a general election just last month. New Voter ID cards were issued to all registered voters at their current address in October. How far off can the rolls be? Not that many people move in a 2 month period for 2K of 11K signatures to have been disqualified for that reason. As I understand it, most that were disqualified didn’t put in any address at all. A campaign or signature gatherer is charged with knowing that information is on the petition.
Frequently moving, disenfranchised people seldom sign petitions.
Instead of attacking VA law, RPV procedures, our Governor, Lt. Governor, AG, state party chairman, other candidates, and the volunteers who gave up a very long day leading into 3am on the morning of Christmas Eve to carry out this civic duty, those who know nothing about VA, its politics, and elected officials might just do better to accept that these two campaigns screwed up. Big time. If the campaigns are smart, they will swallow this bitter pill and redouble their ground game in all the competitive states before it really counts in the general election next Noember.
If you move and don’t send your new address into the government, how would you get a new card at your current address? Plus people are claiming “1st St.” would not count as a match with “First St.” in the verification process. I live in an apartment and can’t count all the different ways my address is written on mail I receive.
I’m not attacking Virginia and I’m not excusing the campaigns for mismanaging. They should have realized that the practical reality of the law was that 15,000 signatures is the minimum. The requirements to pass muster with under 15,000 are ridiculous and unworkable. So I blame the law for being stupid and the campaigns for not realizing it was stupid, or if they did, for not putting more money and lead time into getting the signatures.
Considering that there were no problems with the last presidential primaries, there clearly was no reason to change the law. It looks like overthinking or a way to simply make it harder for candidates to get in without having to admit it. They can claim only 10,000 signatures are required, but with verification being done if you submit under 15,000, there is no way to be sure you’re going to qualify unless you hit 15,000. There was no reason for Santorum, etc. to even try unless they thought they could get 15,000.
...but did Va. change the rules?
VA GOP Changed Ballot Access Rules Last Month
...what has not been reported is that in the only other presidential primaries in which Virginia required 10,000 signatures (2000, 2004, and 2008) the signatures were not checked. Any candidate who submitted at least 10,000 raw signatures was put on the ballot.
“I don’t see how either of those two stipulations would eliminate Newt. He’s definitely in the “one percent” and in the Virginia/D.C. area, he’s definitely connected.”
Oh! Those Ron Paul supporters are sooo silly !! Clearly you have no idea of the process not only must the candidate get 400 signatures in each of the 11 congressional districts they also must put up a slate of delegates in each district. Or come up with over 15,000 signatures where 10,000 is mandatory.. Worse yet you cite some of tne heaviest demo-com districts in the state where Gingrich is supposed to have “connections” to support your case. BTW, Virginia’s RPV chair has no love for Newt.
Newt mught be a flake ,,but RP is a nut case, I hope no one buys into your suggestion that Virginians vote for RP in protest...
The rules are a law, and it has not changed. I’ve seen nobody post links to rules from 2008 and 2012 to show that they used a different criteria to implement the law.
If you told me that in 2008 they simply counted signatures and did no verification, I’d say that was a lousy way to implement the law. I wasn’t involved in 2008, and there was no controversy to lead to speculation, so I don’t know that they checked the signatures.
I only know that if you are supposed to collect 10,000 signatures of registered voters, and 400 have to live in each district, that you need to check that the signatures are those of registered voters, and that at least 400 of them live in each district.
It would amaze me that people argue we should be lax, because apparently those people think we were lax before. We have had elections again and again without voter ID being required, and conservatives seem pretty sure they want voter ID, even though that would be “different”.
The information about how they were going to verify signatures has been available to the campaigns for some time. The suggestion that they made up the rules 5 days ago is ludicrous. The suggestion that campaigns did not know they needed addresses is also ludicrous — the petition forms you download off the website to use are clear on that subject.
The guy collecting signatures for Herman Cain knew he needed my address.
“If you told me that in 2008 they simply counted signatures and did no verification, I’d say that was a lousy way to implement the law.”
That is exactly what they did. The number to not be reviewed was 10,000 and 400 per CD.
After Romney turned in his 16,000, about a month or so ago in November, they changed the rules to 15,000 for no review.....how F’ing convenient.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2825159/posts?q=1&;page=101
Thanks for that info - I was basing my point on the info from Gingrich’s campaign manager, which, you have pointed out, was faulty.
That puts this in a whole other light. I honestly thought it was only embarrassing, not anything truly damaging to Gingrich’s campaign, because I’d read about the “aggressive write-in campaign.”
Yikes.
Gotta say I don’t like the sound of that Operation Chaos knock-off at all!
I learned from a subsequent poster that, despite comments made by Gingrich’s campaign manager, Virginia does not allow write-in candidates in the primaries.
So.
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