Candidates join Perry's Virginia lawsuit

CNN ^

[smoothsailing]

December 31, 2011

Candidates join Perry's Virginia lawsuit

Kevin Liptak

(CNN) - Four candidates left off the Virginia Republican primary ballot joined Rick Perry Saturday in suing the state's board of elections over laws they say are "unconstitutional."

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum joined the lawsuit, originally filed Tuesday, challenging provisions that determine who can appear on the primary ballot.

All five candidates filing the lawsuit failed to qualify for the ballot.

[Windflier]

...don't let anyone know the secret handshake! :)

Secret handshake? LOL. You and I know there's no secret handshake, or hidden rituals, right? Er...um....right.

[smoothsailing]

Uh, oh yeah, that’s right! :)

[altura]

Someone has to lead.

In this case, it was Rick Perry.

He’s a leader.

[Windflier]

Someone has to lead. In this case, it was Rick Perry.

True dat, but it won't win him the nomination.

[smoothsailing]

He’s a leader.

Yes he is. But watch out for that Windflier, he doesn't know about the secret handshake. I think he's a spy! :)

[womanvet]

Happy new year to all...even to the mittites — who know they will have trouble winning a majority of Republican votes, even if no one runs against him.

Mittites, you are supporting a demonrat who barely wants the name “Republican” applied to him. Maybe we should ask the leadership of his church what he told them about his positions on primaries?

[Fishtalk]

okay, I’m going to put in my two cents then stand aside.

There is something WRONG with this Virginia thing although it’s more the appearance of impropriety than anything perhaps illegal.

First, Newt gathered 13,000 signatures. Romney gathered 20,000 sigs. Others gathered varying amounts. Va law requires 10,000 signatures with some 400 at a minimum from all the voting districts...ie they ALL can’t come from Richmond, for example. Virginians welcome to jump in and help or correct me here but I think I got the gist of it.

The REPUBLICAN PARTY has rules that have no verification at all if 15,000 sigs are gathered, thus Romney has no problem. Newt got 13,000 sigs and the VA GOP has a proctologist examining all his sigs and they’re having a field day disallowing his sigs.

Now you can argue that Newt shoulda got the 20K like Romney’s professional campaign, that the rules were known by all.

But what it APPEARS like, to the rest of the world, that with all those candidates on debates and everything, it makes the VA GOP look like snits that want to push Romney,

Come on...only Ron Paul and Mitt Romney on the Va GOP primary ballot? And Newt had enough sigs but not enough to avoid scrutiny while Romney’s was just right?

The jokes write themselves!

It’s a silly, silly system. I’m not exempting Newt or the others for not doing what they had to do, but I’m from Delaware where the Blue Blood Elite GOP here crushed our candidate, Christine O’Donnell.

This year we’re fighting the Democrats and the Blue Blood elites of the Republican party. They’ll do whatever it takes.

For they reach across the aisle with perfectly polished fingernails but they rip the heads of their own base who dare to challenge their proud positioon of Republican authority.

[PapaNew]

Candidates join Perry's Virginia lawsuit

Well, that addresses part of the problem. Who's going to prevent the Democrats from eliminating the Republican they don't like in VA's open primary?

[mikhailovich]

Look, you have to support somebody. You’ve already declared your contempt for Newt and Romney. This filing only helps your candidate, assuming you have one. You make no sense whatsoever.

[txrangerette]

Can you please specify why the others who didn’t qualify for the VA primary ballot can be trusted to secure America, according to you, because your tagline singles out Governor Perry by only saying HE can’t secure America because HE didn’t get on the ballot??

But as you know, neither did the others - that you fail to attack - get on the ballot.

Merely calling everyone’s attention to your perpetual hypocrisy.

[Nita Nupress]

Is there some kind of "ignore" button or function here so i can put you and orgwhozit-whatshisname on permanent ignore? I don't stop by often, but between the two of you, it gets tiresome trying to avoid all your obsessive negativity.

If there's no ignore button, maybe you're handy with HTML and could use the < fontcolor=white > thingy... Only the cool people use it. I promise. You should try it.

[Windflier]

...he doesn't know about the secret handshake. I think he's a spy! :)

All things in due time, my friend. Tonight, we celebrate another day off the clock to Obama's final exit. I raise my glass to you (while I can still type... ;-)

Happy New Year!

[TomasUSMC]

If getting on a State Ballot is to difficult a chore, maybe you shouldn’t by trying out for President.

[Monorprise]

“Yes Virginia...there IS a Constitution...”

Thanks to it the Virginians may have little if any primary.

[Monorprise]

“Newt should’ve verified every signature? He delegated. Stick it.”

With his resources he was lucky to get what he got. I doubt very much he had the time & money to closely scrutinize every one of his gathers and their product.

Got to remember he has to do this in all 50 states. Your talking Gigantic sums, and people get administratively less and less efficient the larger the organization.

This is one of the reasons the federal goverment being so big is such a big problem for us. Nobody can run & control it fully. It has in no small part developed a bureaucratic mind & agenda of its own. Not only have the people lost control, but I beleive their politicians have as well. If not for lack of ability to give orders & make law but effect & control the monstrosity rather then being manipulated & constrained themselves to largely follow.

This does nonetheless speak of Newts ability to make due with limited resources in effecting the same perhaps overly ambitious goals.

[trumandogz]

“Is there some kind of “ignore” button or function here so i can put you and orgwhozit-whatshisname on permanent ignore? I don’t stop by often, but between the two of you, it gets tiresome trying to avoid all your obsessive negativity.”

Negativity implies emotions and in this legal case against Virginia and the Virginia Republican Party and in every other case that goes before a court, emotions should not be involved in the final adjudication.

Instead, only the Constitution and applicable laws as well as previous court decisions should be considered.

Thus, when a poster writes something to the effect of “Virginia is ignoring the Constitution in this case,” they should be able to cite the part of the Constitution that is being violated.

And so far, no one has been able to cite a part of the Constitution that is being violated. A few have cited the “Equal Protection Clause” but it is clear that the “Equal Protection Clause” does not apply to the actions of political parties.

Moreover, many of those who support this lawsuit, seem to be rather uncomfortable with the idea of a federal court dictating to a state that they cannot require a picture ID to vote, but at the same time demand that a federal court intervene in the Virginia GOP Primary.

[trumandogz]

“Can you please specify why the others who didn’t qualify for the VA primary ballot can be trusted to secure America, according to you, because your tagline singles out Governor Perry by only saying HE can’t secure America because HE didn’t get on the ballot??”

Primarily, because all their names would not fit into the tagline field.

Can you please specify why you want the federal courts to intervene in the Virginia GOP Primary, but do not want the federal courts to intervene against Texas and South Carolina’s Voter ID laws?

Do you believe that states have a right to run elections as they believe is best for their state?

Do you believe that state Republican parties have a right to determine standards for who votes and participates in their primaries? Should a state Republican party have the right to hold a Closed Primary?

[txrangerette]

Any half brain could post the following:

*If Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum can’t secure a spot on the VA primary ballot, how can they be trusted to secure America?*

But I’m supposed to take seriously someone who only posts that about one candidate who didn’t get on the ballot, and especially knowing of your expressed contempt for that one candidate? Really?

And also knowing of your casual, carefree willingness to possibly vote for the others who didn’t get on, either?

LOL

(I don’t happen to believe that it’s Gingrich or Santorum you support, anyway, but that’s another issue. Just going by what you CLAIMED.)

[Future Useless Eater]

...this change from de facto ignoring the law regarding signature validity previously to now following that law as written constitutes a 'violation' of the law...

You are "making stuff up" so I assume it was your candidate (Romney) and his co-conspirators exposed...

There is no "law as written" are you referring to. Here are the two in question...

§ 24.2-506 is the VA code for the procedure of collecting petitions for any STATE office...
§ 24.2-545 is the VA code for the procedure of collecting petitions for any Presidential Primary...

The first law requires a "resident address" of the voter. The second law does not. Feel free to click on those and check!
The first law requires a petition's witness to be "qualified to register to vote, for the office for which he is circulating the petition" and the 2nd law does not.
For Presidential petitions, the gatherer/witness could be from Mars, it is not a requirement "by law".


But the RPV and State Board illegally chose to treat those as "required by law items" by strongly enforcing them starting this year, making it doubly hard to get enough signatures.

But what is worse and possibly illegal, is that on Tuesday Dec 20th, Romney's campaign manager, Bolling turned in 16,021 signatures to the RPV. So then (after possibly browsing thru the 16,021 overnight) the NEXT DAY, at 10am Dec 21st, David Rexrode, executive director of the RPV invented an un-dated "Safe Harbor" letter GUARANTEEING that Romney's petitions would NOT be examined.
http://www.rpv.org/sites/default/files/2012%20Petition%20Certification%20Process_1.pdf

The conspirators in that RPV office created that letter, because they were fearful that Romney might otherwise get booted by the same anal microscopic verification which they were planning in the next 36 hours for Gingrich & Perry petitions.

The letter gave the RPV free reign to use whatever drastic examination procedures were necessary to discard "enough" Gingrich and Perry petitions, while knowing the same standards would not apply to Romney. ... Romney's petitions could have been collected by ACORN with half saying "Mickey Mouse" and Romney would have still passed.

Some have suggested that David Rexrode, Pat Mullings, and Bill Bolling should go to prison for this conspiracy. Or at very least banned from politics, tarred and feathered, and run out of Virginia on a rail.


When the RPV and the State Board pulled this "Obama-style disqualification" of their (Romney's) opponents, they were committing election fraud against Virginia voters, because, of their own free will, Virginia was NOT likely to choose Romney or Paul. Those two candidates only received a combined total of 10% of the VA primary vote in 2008, and were near the bottom in this year's VA polls.

But after the trickery of this RPV office, the voters had no free will. The situation made it virtually certain that Romney would get > 50% and therefore would be the "winner take all" of Virginia's delegates.

---

I'm in favor of the end result - allowing all seven candidates on the ballot, but it would be better if a judge ruled it for the sake of enfranchising all VA voters, AND allowing discovery of the co-conspirators records, and investigating the suggestion that Romney volunteers were improperly on the qualification committee.

[muawiyah]

Oh, you are bad ~ DISCOVERY ~ right down to the short hairs.