I just read a fantastic article about how multiple candidates in the Republic Presidential Run-off didn’t meet the requirements to be on the Virginia Primary Ballot.
Doing a little digging it looks like this is the first year Virginia is actually verifying signatures collected by Primary candidates. In previous years anyone who turned in 10,000 signatures that were only supposedly from Virginia citizens were put on the primary ballot. This year Virginia changed primary law to say that signatures would be have to be verified. Not a big change, primary candidates were supposed to get valid signatures anyways.
However, aside from Gingrich, who blames his shortfall of signatures on one “paid volunteer” committing fraud, the others don’t seem to have a leg to stand on. Huntsman, Bachmann, and Santorum never even turned in signatures and a petition to be in the Virginia Primary, and Perry just didn’t have enough signatures.
My favorite part of all this is the candidates are suing to be on the primary ballot. In their suit they claim they should be on the ballot to save money for the state and party that the lawsuit would entail. Basically, we can’t meet your criteria, criteria you are unfairly enforcing this year (aka – verifying signatures that are supposed to be from Virginian citizens actually are from Virginia citizens), so we will sue to be on the ballot anyways.
Forget state rights, forget following the rules, forget that the State Political Parties create Primary Rules for their Parties (aka – the Virginian Republican party created the primary rules for Republican candidates for the state). Forget all that. We didn’t follow the rules set up by our own party in the state, so we’re going to sue to get our way. By the way you should let us on there to save money we would otherwise force you to use defending these unfair rules.
That certainly does sound American these days. Not Presidential though.