January 4, 2012 - 10:11 am
Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, and Rick Santorum joined forces today and filed a joint motion with a district court in Virginia, joining Rick Perry’s effort to force the Virginia Board of Elections to put them on the ballot for the state’s March 6 presidential primary.
The candidates are seeking to intervene as plaintiffs in a case filed by Rick Perry for ballot access to the Virginia primary pursuant to an order issued by the court on December 29, 2011.
Here’s a link to the motion.
If this does not succeed and the only candidates available are Ron Paul and Romney, my family and I will vote for Ron Paul.
If it were me, and my only choices were Romney and Ron Paul, I wouldn’t bother to vote. Not unless it were winner-take-all and Paul had a chance of taking delegates away from Obamney. But that’s unlikely.
I’m a VA voter (NoVa). I predict the court will not allow anyone on the ballot other than those who met the standards of primary ballot access, as defined by VA law. Perhaps Perry and Gingrich have a valid argument, as they submitted 10K+ signatures, only to have at least 1K thrown out.
But Santorum or Huntsman? These bozos didn’t even bother submitting _any_ petitions at all. What valid argument could they present the court, other than their campaign managers telling their campaign counsel, ‘what the heck, just join the lawsuit. If it works, we might just make it on the ballot. It’s the only chance we’ve got; we can’t win by following the rules.’
Desperate measures by desperate candidates. And a court won’t buy such a flimsy argument.
My vote will be cast for Ron Paul, but there are a lot of rubes and Establishment clowns living in VA, so most likely Romney will win, 60-40 pct. A shame, but those are how the rules are followed…
(But wouldn’t it be a nice outcome if only the Paul voters are super-motivated to show up in droves, delivering my Commonwealth by surprise to the good Doctor? There’s always hope.)
I’m more annoyed with Gingrich than the ones who are running a more “shoestring” candidacy; he lives in Mclean, so he should know the rules! He was just lazy, looks like. My son says a lot of his friends at GMU like Paul, but I don’t know if that will translate into votes.
Gee, I really want to nominate a candidate that was too incompetent to get their name on a ballot. I’m sure the Obama Machine is shaking in their boots.
Some of these candidates didn’t even bother to turn in signatures at all. Can I have my name on the ballot, as long as we’re ignoring the rule of law?
I disagree. This is not a good measurement of candidate strength. They oddly made tough rules much odder and more subjective and radically more difficult. There was no good reason to do that, and it obviously favors insider guys with preexisting operations. What they were asking for is not easy to do.
In the past, a candidate had to challenge another to get his signatures tossed out. This time, they just threw thousands out despite the candidates being legitimate. Obviously legitimate. It is ridiculous to keep this decision from the voters. They should be the true measurement of candidate strength.
In Russia, they use rules like this and new ways to interpret them, and it’s nearly impossible for reformers to manage it. And they say ‘well, sorry chum, that’s the law’. That is not acceptable.
Also, some of these guys making these calls are affiliated with the beneficiary. No, it wasn’t a fix. It was one of a million little calls that are meant to make it needlessly expensive to get on a ballot and run for office, favoring only those with access. Do it over and over, and it has a huge impact. I think what happened here is somebody went too far and now the GOP looks quite undemocratic. In a swing state.
The VA rules do seem excessively restrictive, just to get on a primary ballot. In many states it is easier to get on the general election ballot, than it is to get on the primary ballot there. These type of excessive ballot access restrictions are very unfair to smaller candidates, that cannot afford the expense and organization to comply. On the other hand, all the candidates did know those rules, and could have complied with them, like Paul and Romney did. The fact that they could not indicates weaknesses or lack of funding in their campaign organizations.
Not sure how the lawsuit will go. I would agree the ballot rules are excessively strict and unfair to smaller candidates. But just because a law is bad, does not mean it should be struck down as unconstitutional, that is a much higher bar. Courts exceed that standard far too often now days, striking down laws that should just be fixed by the original lawmaking body, becomming excessively activist. I think the court should pass the ball back to where it belongs, the body that passed the law, and let them fix it. If they refuse to fix it, that is between them and the people of VA.
All of the above: read the whole story. The new limit was suddenly 15,000, practically cutting out anyone who hadn’t already established a campaign structure from four years before like Romney & Paul had done. Virginia shrugged & said that the campaigns had been notified twice, once in March (when no candidates had declared) & October (when none of the new campaigns had been fully established).
Ken Cuccinelli, VA AG, agrees with the suit.
It was strongly suggested that candidates submit around 15,000 in order to end up with the required 10,000 valid signatures.
“I’m a VA voter (NoVa). I predict the court will not allow anyone on the ballot other than those who met the standards of primary ballot access, as defined by VA law.” Waaaa, start counting those hanging chads! Get those machines back in here and turn them on!
There is so much spin from the candidates that didn’t make the ballot. If they didn’t turn in 10k VALID signatures, the didn’t qualify. There was no conspiracy, just incompetence. It’s freaking Newt Gingrich’s home state and he still didn’t qualify!
“It’s freaking Newt Gingrich’s home state and he still didn’t qualify!” PJM will keep apologizing for this sad sack failure till the cows come home.
“Was already clear, but GOP establishment reaction to Paul tonight confirms that party’s most important issue is promotion of perpetual war.” – Radley Balko. He continues:
“A party that repels and even demonizes the one candidate able to bring new voters to its ranks is not a healthy party.” — Andrew Sullivan, who at least tells you which way the wind is blowing today
I do not agree with Ron Paul enough to vote for him. But I do agree that he has many good ideas that are worth hearing, and should have his place in the party. The repubs are unwise to demonize and marginalize him as much as they do. Saying he should not get the nomination, sure, but saying he is not a serious candidate worth hearing, no.
The problem Paul has is his libertarian ideas actually have a home in both parties, repub and dem, depending on the issue, but is not fully in harmony with either major party. Repubs love Pauls fiscal ideas, but not his foreign policy, civil liberties, and positions on gays and drugs. Dems love Pauls non-economic ideas, but not his free market small government principles.
One thing more, I wish the dem party would also get some libertarian orientated figures, like Ron Paul. It would do them a lot of good, and might help get them out of their socialist rut, and also might get them to start respecting free speech, personal freedoms, and civil liberties again, an area where dems used to be strong, but are now (other than abortion and gays) little better than repubs. I respect the fact that, while marginalizing Paul, the repubs at least have a figure like him. But the dems have no corresponding figure at all, and from what I see, have little respect for the constitution, and individual liberty.