SIGNATURES NOT PREVIOUSLY CHECKED IN VIRGINIA

RightWingNews.com/ ^ | December 25th, 2011 | Richard Winger

[Yosemitest]

December 25th, 2011, Edited by Richard Winger

There are currently many news stories and blog discussions about the Virginia presidential primary ballot access law.
Some large blogs, such as Red State, have over 300 comments about the story.
Some defend the current Virginia ballot access laws on the grounds that in past presidential elections,
a fairly large number of Republican presidential primary candidates managed to qualify.

But 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, on notarized sheets,
and which had at least 400 signatures from each U.S. House district, was put on the ballot.
In 2000, five Republicans qualified: George Bush, John McCain, Alan Keyes, Gary Bauer, and Steve Forbes.
In 2004 there was no Republican primary in Virginia.
In 2008, six Republicans qualified: John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson
(an earlier version of this post erroneously said Alan Keyes qualified in 2008, but he only qualified in 2000).

The only reason the Virginia Republican Party checked the signatures for validity for the current primary is that
in October 2011, an independent candidate for the legislature, Michael Osborne, sued the Virginia Republican Party
because it did not check petitions for its own members, when they submitted primary petitions.

Osborne had no trouble getting the needed 125 valid signatures for his own independent candidacy,
but he charged that his Republican opponent’s primary petition had never been checked,
and that if it had been, that opponent would not have qualified.
The lawsuit, Osborne v Boyles, cl 11-520-00, was filed in Bristol County Circuit Court.
It was filed too late to be heard before the election, but is still pending.
The effect of the lawsuit was to persuade the Republican Party to start checking petitions.
If the Republican Party had not changed that policy, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry would be on the 2012 ballot.

The Democratic Party of Virginia has been opposed to the strict law on primary ballot access,
and has been in the habit of collecting signatures for all Democratic presidential candidates recognized by the party.
In 2008, the state party collected 7,300 signatures for all its candidates,
thus easing the burden on them and requiring them to collect only 4,000 to 5,000 on their own.

[Yosemitest]

"Very interesting..."

[Flintlock]

I KNEW there was something rotten in the state of Virginia.

[Erik Latranyi]

There is nothing wrong with checking signatures and Republicans should do this in every state and local election, setting a high standard for ethics against the liberal non-standard.

What is wrong is changing the rules a few weeks prior to a filing deadline.....and then, not changing the rules consistently.

You see, Virginia now says that if you submit the 10,000 required signatures, each one will be checked for veracity(Gingrich-Perry).

But if you submit 15,000 signatures, none of the signatures will be checked for veracity(Romney - Paul).

[Notwithstanding]

Were sigantures checked the same way for all candidates? If not there is unequal treatment and it is unlawful.

[BfloGuy]

I understand the controversy surrounding this primary, but the idea of collecting signatures that won’t be checked strikes me as ridiculous. Why even bother going to the trouble?

[blueyon]

That is not the big part of the story but what is may have been a violation of the Code of Virginia ...from what I was reading...Virginia Code states in section 24.2-545 “B. Any person seeking the nomination of the national political party for the office of President of the United States, or any group organized in this Commonwealth on behalf of, and with the consent of such person, may file with the State Board petitions signed by at least 10,000 qualified voters, including at least 400 qualified voters from each congressional district in the Commonwealth, “....It clearly does not mention “addresses” like in section 24.2-506.........So per what I see (See link below)...since this section does not mention the word “address” like the other section, were the ones that were kicked out for not having an address really a violation?

“Virginia May Have Improperly Excluded Signatures From Perry, Gingrich. a Recount May Be Needed!” http://www.varight.com/news/virginia-may-have-improperly-excluded-signatures-from-perry-gingrich-a-recount-may-be-needed/

[Conservative Vermont Vet]

Yeah and where are all the "Newt Haters," Romeny-Bots, Paul-inistas and sundry other, Leftist Trolls who have been posting articles to try and make it seem that there was "nuttin' to see here; all Newt's fault;" how he should have known better; how if he can't manage a campagaign, how can we expect his to manage the Presidency, etc., ad nauseum!

There were even some who insisted it was NOT the fault of the Virginia Republican Party but that this was "The Law" of the State.

Bovine Excrement!

As we see here, it WAS the Republi-Tard Party who "Changed the Rules" and had nothing to do with State Law, thus who now wants to argue that the "FIX WAS NOT IN" for Mittens???

[xrmusn]

This is strictly the R’s fault.

If they are not smart enough to confer with the DNC when it comes to ANYTHING remotely shady in the election process, they deserve to lose.

I was observing the other day that since I quit drinking in 1990, we have have Clinton, Bush II and BO as leader.

I must commend myself for NOT drinking again -
I guess the prior leaders did not bother me as I was in a constant happy state and was able to stand the ‘heat’. Though Johnson, Nixon(Ford) and Carter did try my patience, but at least I could increase my intake to make things ‘well’.
Also, not only a few ‘stinkers’ in there (since 90) but the alternate choice we were given also sucked - without exception. BushI/Clinton, Dole/Clinton, BushII/Gore, BushII/Kerry, McCain/BO, (all of the above)/BO.

Pretty sad state of affairs when a nation of 300 mill (give or take etc) and that is the best we can come up with.

And in one we had two ‘losers’ from the same (small/secret) fraternity - now that is really narrowing it down.

[FES0844]

Can’t they post the signatures on line so people can confirm or deny their signatures for accuracy? Just wondering.

[heiss]

Rules are for conservatives. If liberals lose, rules can be changed afterwards. Bachnann and Santorum are kept out, but Nancy Pelosi and Al Sharpton ally is squeezed in.

[normy]

Santorum, Bachmann and Huntsman never submitted one signature. They didn't even attempt it. Perry and Newt submitted above the required amount and had enough rejected to disqualify them.

I can only assume Santorum, Bachmann and Huntsman didn't try because they never expected to make it to Super Tuesday. Newt was the first candidate to announce and he scrambled at the end because I believe he too never thought he had a chance.

Paul and Mitt ran last time.

[JohnBovenmyer]

Santorum, at least, was reported to be trying to reach 10k signatures and had announced a ‘last push’ for them before the deadline, but fell short. There’s no point in turning in what you’ve collected if it came to less than 10k. I presume Bachmann was in the same situation.

[af_vet_rr]

I understand the controversy surrounding this primary, but the idea of collecting signatures that won’t be checked strikes me as ridiculous. Why even bother going to the trouble?

I don't get this either. Were people really under the impression that the signatures wouldn't be checked? Doesn't that open this up to fraud, especially on the part of liberals crossing over to try and boost Republican candidates that would otherwise have no chance.

I still have some criticism leveled towards Gingrich (and Perry). They should have been able to collect 20,000 signatures. It would have been a lot harder for the Republicans in Virginia to throw out 50% of the signatures.

[CharlesWayneCT]

FIrst of all, your link is bad. It just goes to the main page, not any article.

Second, the article as you posted it has no actual facts. It asserts something but has no evidence.

Third, the article AS YOU POSTED IT contains one link, which of course I tried because your main link was no good. And that link took me to a LGBT web site. So thanks for that. Could you please not include links to LGBT web sites without some sort of warning?

I’ve seen multiple people assert that virginia never checked the signatures before. I can find nobody who has actually found a memo saying that, nor has anybody in the RPV confirmed that assertion.

It might be true. If it is, that doesn’t change the fact that the law says the signatures have to be valid, and it is the RPV’s job to validate the signatures, and if they weren’t before, that was the problem, not that they are doing so now.

You might as well argue that we shouldn’t require Voter ID because we didn’t before.

I’d prefer if we hadn’t checked the signatures, but it’s not the RPV’s fault that they did their job and the candidates didn’t do the job they had, which was to get 10,000 VALID signatures.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Lot of bloggers asserting they are legal experts now.

The Virginia Board of Elections is responsible for implementing the law. Their letter to candidates, sent back in May, said they needed the addresses. So if the addresses weren’t needed, that was an error by the Virginia state government, not some plot by the RPV.

But the forms and the direction haven’t changed, so they’ve been requiring signatures for some time now. Which gets back to the question of whether they verified these before or not. But it’s not really a question of “violating the code of virginia”, because it’s Virginia government insisting that the addresses are needed.

[CharlesWayneCT]

I don’t want to get in with the conspiracists or the whiners.

But I did want to explain what makes this job so hard. The issue isn’t simply collecting signatures, although 10,000 signatures is a lot of signatures — we can see that Wisconsin had no trouble tons of signatures for their recall efforts, so you can do it if you really work at it.

We don’t have party registration, and the RPV and local candidates guard their mailing lists, so it’s not easy to target voters.

The rules about the signatures are onerous. For example, we have 100+ counties and cities. Each petition submitted must have signatures for ONLY ONE political entity, be it a county or a city. So you need to have 100+ sets of petitions. Then, for some of those counties, there are more than one district, so you’d need sets of petitions for each district in each county.

Each petition has to be double-sided. That isn’t as bad as it was a few years ago, it’s easy to do double-sided these days. Each petition has to be handled by a person who is old enough to vote in our state, and otherwise eligible to vote (but not registered). The people signing have to be registered.

Each petition has to be signed and notarized for the person collecting the signatures.

The signers have to affirm that they will be voting in our primary.

So you can’t just camp out at the metro and collect signatures. You’ll get people in different districts, in different counties, registered and not, and who won’t want to say they are voting in the primary. You need their full address, and their full signed name, and the form ASKS for 4 digits of their SS even though that is optional.

When I collected signatures in 2008, I don’t remember getting a notary for my Fred Thompson signatures. I’m guessing they notarized it later (which would be improper, but I didn’t know the rules). The Romney team sent a guy to collect the petitions who WAS a notary, and I signed the page in front of him so he could stamp it.

The easiest way to collect signatures is to show up on election day. Then you know the people are registered, are republicans, and live in the county and vote in the district.

This year was slightly harder because of redistricting. Some people still don’t know what district they are in.

I’m not making excuses for candidates, but I do understand how hard it is. Romney and Paul did it somehow, and I don’t think they were forging signatures. They just started early and worked at it.

[blueyon]

Thank you for the reply
First the blogger I linked to happens to also write for a paper (or did) so he is not “just a blogger” like me
Second (and I ask because I am trying to sort this out I am not PMS’ing on you)so what you are saying is the RPV is above the “Code of Virginia” and can ask for something that is not in the Code (like their letter stating they want addresses)?
Third if the Code of Virginia is wrong in what is has, it is still the Code correct?
I know that we lost a RPV volunteer to a horrible car accident so I am not trying to disrespect what RPV says but I still do not get how they can ask for (and that is the “law” over Virginia code)for something that right or wrongly is not in the Code.............

[af_vet_rr]

I agree with you, and I don't want to get in with the conspiracy theorists either.

My guess, and correct me if I'm wrong, if Newt and Perry had known that the signatures were going to be verified, they would have put a lot more effort into collecting signatures.

Now this is veering into conspiracy territory, but Newt was sure pushing hard to get signatures all the way up to the deadline. I wonder if somebody tipped him off.

[Sun]

The courts in VA are going to be busy!

[9YearLurker]

I believe all of the candidates were advised to collect at least 15000 signatures because they were going to be verified.