Is this any way to choose a Presidential Candidate?

I came across this interesting blog post about what happened recently in Virginia on our way to choosing republican candidates who will be permitted to appear on our ballots in the March primary. The author raises some very interesting questions about the most onerous state election procedure for access to a primary ballot.

First, the Virginia State board of elections issued four pages of instructions to candidates in May. Some candidates began collecting their petition signatures over the summer. Of course those candidates who had not yet decided to run could not begin in July, 8 months prior to the primary.

The Ashby Law Blog explains the whole process, and comments on it:

“Virginia’s statutory ballot access requirement is, quite simply, one of if not the most daunting in the country: A minimum of 10,000 petition signatures collected statewide, including at least 400 from each of its 11 congressional districts. That’s hard enough. But then there are the additional restrictions: The petition circulators must be registered or eligible to vote in Virginia. The signatures must be gathered using the State Board of Elections’ official form, a two-page document which must be reproduced as double-sided. (Single-sided stapled forms are not accepted.) Signatures must be collected on forms that are specific to each city, county and congressional district. Only “qualified” voters may sign a petition. And every single petition form must be sworn and notarized.

Want a sense of how next-to-impossible this is? I know top-flight Virginia political consultants who turned down lucrative petition project contracts from presidential campaigns because they did not think it could be done.” Ummmm……

On Tuesday, Romney was the first candidate to file his petitions with the state. Lt. Governor Bill Bolling personality delivered Romney’s 16,026 signatures to the state Board of Elections. The only other candidate to have over 15,000 signatures was Ron Paul.

Here’s the part that gives me most heartburn, from Pat Mullins, chairman of the RPV, “Any candidate who submits at least 15,000 signatures of registered voters on valid petitions
statewide and has at least 600 signatures of registered voters on valid petitions from each of the 11 Congressional Districts shall be deemed to have met the threshold for qualification and will be certified (provided, of course, that other requirements of State law have also been met).
If any candidate submits fewer than 15,000 signatures of registered voters on valid petitions statewide or fewer than 600 signatures of registered voters on valid petitions in one or more of the 11 Congressional Districts, the Republican Party of Virginia will individually verify signatures until the 10,000 signature statewide threshold and/or 400 per Congressional district is met.”

That means those candidates who submit half again as many signatures as required are held to a lower standard than those who submit over 10,000, but not all the way to 15,000. It means Romney and Paul had NO signatures verified, NONE. For all we know they could have submitted pages and pages of signatures of Mickey Mouse. Half of their signatures may have been invalid, we’ll never know. The other candidates had ALL of their signatures looked at by Republican volunteers. I have a real problem with this double standard for examining signatures on the petitions.

In addition to that, I learned today that each signature is verified by only one person, with very minimal instruction, just two days before Christmas. Republican volunteers work late into the night to verify signatures. Who knows how good their concentration was in the early morning hours of Christmas Eve. The republican volunteer goes through a petition and strikes whatever number of signatures they deem not to be valid. No one verifies what any volunteer has done with his/her stack of petitions. What happens if the volunteer supports a candidate other than the one on the petition they’re examining? Might that volunteer nitpick every page of signatures and throw out many more than necessary? No one would ever know because no one checks.

This whole procedure needs to be reworked. It’s too important to be done this way. The results of this procedure have left Virginia as an afterthought on Super Tuesday. It hurts the republican party because many fewer people will bother to vote in Virginia due the limited choices. A low turnout will hurt the party’s chances of identifying Virginia republican voters for the general election in November. Primaries are normally a great way to add to our republican lists, a great way to reach out to voters, but that won’t happen this year. If all these things weren’t enough of a problem for republicans, I’ve already heard democrats looking forward to voting for Ron Paul in the primary. They are rather happy with the limited choices on our ballot and are happy to crossover to vote for Paul, because they would love to see Ron Paul as our nominee. With only one other candidate on the ballot democrats think there’s a good chance for Paul to win.

The procedure needs to be changed, it’s not fair to our candidates or to our voters.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Goodnight!

UPDATE: The Richmond Times-Dispatch weighs in.

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