Posted on 01/13/2012 1:56:18 PM PST by Sopater
A federal judge has ruled that Rick Perry and three other Republican presidential candidates will not be added to Virginia's primary ballot.
District Court Judge John Gibney Jr. rejected their requests, arguing that they filed their challenges to Virginia's stringent ballot requirements too late.
"They played the game, they lost, and then they complained about the rules," he said.
The decision means -- for now, anyway -- that Perry, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich will be left off the March 6 ballot after failing to meet a state requirement to collect 10,000 signatures in support of their respective campaigns.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
How dare anyone want to vote for someone other than Romney.
This really doesn’t mean much to anyone outside Virginia, it only means that now Virginia;s Primary is as senseless as Iowa or New Hampshire.
They are only making themselves irrelevant.
Who cares who wins in Virginia, both are losers.
Pardon my ignorance on this one, is there a write-in option on primary ballots?
On top of the limited choices, there’s the ridiculous new “loyalty oath” you’ll be required to swear to if you wish to vote in the primary.
As far as I’m concerned, the states should stop pretending, call off their primaries and save some big bucks.
It would piss people off but I see that as a good thing.
Let me guess? Either a liberal or establishment judge. Or both.
it seems like a dirty way for Mitt to snatch up undeserved delegates. The majority of Republicans want anybody but Mitt and anybody but Mitt isn’t even on the ballot in Virginia? this is how he thinks he’s going to steal this election, how he’s going to defy our will-with dirty tricks and a slim plurality. FUMR.
I believe Gingrich and one other candidate actually had collected 10,000 signatures, but some of them were rejected after scrutiny. Romney was not submitted to the verification process, however, because he had been collecting signatures for months and it was felt that he would have enough no matter what, and in addition, between the time that he filed and the later filings of the other two, there was some kind of procedural change as the result of a lawsuit. That meant that VA no longer accepted raw signatures, but computer verified them, something that Romney didn’t have to go through. That’s what I recall about the situation when it first emerged, in any event.
So they actually did follow the rules and get enough raw signatures, but the rules seem to have changed just enough to prevent them from qualifying.
How is this a federal question? Don’t the states get to decide?
Somehow, if this were a Demonrat, I think the state would be forced to put a candidate on the ballot.
“They played the game...”
So now the most important election in my lifetime is relegated to game status...by a sitting judge, no less. Dear Lord.
No. There are no write-ins allowed on the VA primary ballot.
I am one of them and I will unfortunately have to hold my nose and vote for the stench of Roach Paul but Myth Remulak and the GOP establishment must be taught a lesson. It is a wasted vote anyway.
We'll have to vote for one of the Liberals in November (Romney-the-RINO, or The Messiah).
Might as well wrap your lips around the tailpipe in the garage now.....
Good.
It’s not fair to the candidates who did the work to allow the others on.
I’m sure the GOP, the same one that wants Romney as the nom, tried hard to get his competition on the ballot.
I believe his point was that if they thought the rules were unconstitutional, and would prevent them from collecting signatures, they should have filed suit before hand, to get permission to use out-of-state people; or they could have USED out-of-state people, had those ballots rejected, and then sued to get them accepted.
What they ASKED the judge to do was ASSUME that if they had been allowed to use out-of-state people, they would have collected enough signatures. Judges don’t like to assume things.
If I had been in the Gingrich or Perry camp, the day my signatures were rejected, I would have launched a week-long petition drive, collected 5000 more signatures, and submitted them before the “deadline” for the RPV to turn over signatures to the state.
I would THEN have argued that the RPV’s 5-day rule was arbitrary, since the RPV had already agreed they wouldn’t have to check the signatures anyway if you had 15,000.
A judge would very well GO for that, given that it is a ballot access rule, and wouldn’t have effected the timeline for printing ballots.
Or if Perry wanted to do this suit, collect signatures with out-of-staters, so when you go to court you can drop 10,000 signatures on the table and prove you could do it with out-of-staters.
Always better to look like you are trying.
I still want them on the ballot, and I’m still lobbying the legislature to change the rules. THis isn’t a game, this is the presidency of our country, and for Virginians to not be allowed to VOTE for obvious candidates is absurd.
Ballot rules are for keeping people from BEING candidates, not for keeping voters from being able to vote for the candidates of their choice. As a national election, Perry, Santorum, and Gingrich are all candidates, they are all getting votes, they all have delegates, they are all going to the convention.
So they are not being ‘punished’ here, I’m being punished by being denied my right to pick the person I want to be president. Again — if we just knocked out candidates, then I wouldn’t be “denied” a vote for a candidate, since they wouldn’t BE a candidate. But in this case, they ARE candidates, and I can’t vote for them.
I also urged the legislature, if they don’t want to put them on the ballot, to instead change the rule to allow write-in votes. Then you “reward” those who followed the rules, without punishing the voters.
If I were Ron Paul, I would promise Gingrich that if I dropped out, I’d ask my Virginia delegates to vote for him. Then I’d run a campaign asking GIngrich voters to vote for me to get the delegates.
Or, Paul could make the deal with Santorum. I don’t think Perry polls high enough to matter.
If I knew Paul was going to throw his votes to Santorum if Santorum was ahead of Paul otherwise, I could vote for Paul knowing my delegates were going to end up with Rick.
Virginia needs to change its law to allow more candidates to get on the ballot. Ballot access rules are meant to protect the public from undue proliferation of candidates, not to give perpetual candidates like Romney a vested right to avoid ballot competition from candidates supported by the majority of Republicans. The “we played by the rules” argument does not apply here.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.