Newt Gingrich joins Rick Perry in having had his application to be on the Virginia Republican primary ballot disqualified. That leaves Mitt Romney and Ron Paul as the only candidates on the ballot.
CNN (“Gingrich, Perry fail to qualify for GOP primary ballot in Virginia“):
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich failed to collect enough signatures to appear on the Virginia primary ballot, the Republican Party of Virginia announced Saturday morning.
Gingrich, as well as Texas Gov. Rick Perry, did not meet the state’s requirement of 10,000 signatures and, therefore, did not qualify for the ballot, the Virginia GOP said via Twitter. The state GOP announced Perry’s failure to qualify late Friday.
Gingrich and Perry were among four candidates who submitted ballot petitions to the Virginia State Board of Elections on Thursday, which was the deadline to file. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Rep. Ron Paul also submitted petitions.
The state party spent Friday verifying that the submitted petitions met the requirements to appear on the ballot. The Virginia GOP said on its Twitter page Friday that Romney and Paul had both submitted enough signatures to appear on the ballot.
Virginia requires candidates to submit petitions with 10,000 signatures from registered Virginia voters. Additionally, 400 signatures must come from voters in each of the state’s eleven congressional districts.
As I noted yesterday, I find the whole state-by-state qualification process for what is for all practical purposes a national election silly. Virginia’s requirements, in particular, seem rather onerous, especially when combined with an absurdly early deadline. Surely, it doesn’t take 10 weeks to print a ballot?
Aside from the impact on the excluded candidates, the consequence of this system is that the Commonwealth’s voters will have their choices greatly diminished. This strikes me as a poor result–and I say that as someone who expects to vote for Romney, whose own fortunes here are greatly enhanced by this outcome.
