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HP.com: Virginia Primary Ballot Challenge: Judge Rules Against Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum & Jon Huntsman

Ellis

By Ellis
in The Tailgate

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Ellis

Ellis

Posted
Posted

Surprised no one has posted this yet.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/13/virginia-primary-ballot-lawsuit_n_1205277.html

RICHMOND, Va. -- A federal judge has refused to add Texas Gov. Rick Perry and three other candidates to Virginia's Republican presidential primary ballot.

U.S. District Judge John Gibney ruled Friday that the candidates should have challenged Virginia's primary qualifying rules earlier. Gibney said they knew the rules months ago.

Perry sued last month after failing to submit enough signatures to get on the ballot. Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman also failed to qualify and later joined Perry's lawsuit. They asked Gibney to declare Virginia's law unconstitutional and add their names to the March 6 ballot.

Only former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Rep. Ron Paul qualified for the March 6 primary ballot.

This could get interesting...

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mjah

mjah

Posted
Posted

Can't follow the rules like everyone else? No problem. Just petition the courts to bend and twist them for your personal benefit.

(Then, a short time later, go back to championing "personal responsibility" and accusing the other side of legislating by judicial fiat.)

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twa

twa

Posted
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:ols:http://hotair.com/archives/2012/01/13/breaking-federal-judge-rejects-perrys-challenge-to-virginia-ballot-law/

I’m amazed that a federal court would use laches to defeat a claim that affects a constitutional right and which the judge admits is meritorious given that the ruling will bar millions of citizens from voting for their preferred candidate in a presidential primary. (There’s no write-in option under Virginia law, remember.) Yeah, fine, Perry and the rest are disorganized morons who should have challenged the ballot law sooner. How does that justify stiffing the entire Republican electorate in Virginia by letting an unconstitutional ballot requirement stand?

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Larry

Larry

Posted
Posted
interesting the judge ruled the restriction DID violate the 1st,but due to time issues.....

No, he didn't.

where's Larry?....I need someone to be outraged at the injustice

Where's twa? I need somebody to announce that Perry has a really good case, and then back it up by claiming that people said things that they didn't.

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Larry

Larry

Posted
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So Virginia gets to choose between Romney and Paul? I wonder if Paul will win the state?

No, but his supporters will trumpet his very strong second as a moral victory. :)

----------

Actually, I could see him having a shot.

With only two choices on the ballot, and one of them "guaranteed" to win, and all of that, I could see a really low turnout. Whereas, if there's one thing you can say about Paul's supporters, they're zealous. The Paul People will show up and vote. The other folks might not.

In politics, the amount of enthusiasm is an important factor.

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skinsmarydu

skinsmarydu

Posted
Posted
Can't follow the rules like everyone else? No problem. Just petition the courts to bend and twist them for your personal benefit.

(Then, a short time later, go back to championing "personal responsibility" and accusing the other side of legislating by judicial fiat.)

Yep, that's the Repubs for ya. And no one is responsible enough to be leader of this nation if they don't have the organizational skills to be on time for ballot entries IMHO. Hail.

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Larry

Larry

Posted
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Is VA proportionate or winner take all for their primary?

All I've heard is that some ES poster (I think it might have been you) claimed that the primary is proportional unless one candidate gets 51% of the vote, in which case he gets all of them.

This poster (whoever it was) was saying that only having two candidates might well end up costing Paul some delegates, because instead of getting 20% of them, he'd get zero.

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SnyderShrugged

SnyderShrugged

Posted
Posted
All I've heard is that some ES poster (I think it might have been you) claimed that the primary is proportional unless one candidate gets 51% of the vote, in which case he gets all of them.

This poster (whoever it was) was saying that only having two candidates might well end up costing Paul some delegates, because instead of getting 20% of them, he'd get zero.

I honestly dont know (I think the conversation that you were referring to was regarding FL and at the time it hadnt been 100% determined).

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Larry

Larry

Posted
Posted

As to the ballot challenge, and the "they can't follow the law" claims, and so forth, the facts, as I understand them. (And I'll freely admit that I haven't even attempted to research these facts. Everything I Know I Learned From Extremeskins.)

  • Virginia law requires 10,000 signatures to get on the ballot.
    (And it requires these signatures to be gathered across the state, not just in a few places.)
  • However, an unwritten law, in politics, is to employ overkill.
    It's perfectly normal for signatures on a petition to be thrown out. In fairly large numbers. People can't read the names, or the guy who signed isn't really registered, or people sign the thing twice. Lots of reasons.
    The people who gather petitions for a living know this, and they "budget for it". They intentionally try to get a comfortable amount, over and above what's absolutely required, so that if, say, 10% of their signatures get thrown out, then they still made it, anyway.
    And, it's also recognized that overkill reduces opposition. If you turn in twice as many signatures as you need, then nobody bothers to even try to object, because they know that even if they get a bunch of signatures thrown out, they'll still lose, anyway, so why fight it?
  • The law's been this way for several elections.
  • However, in previous elections, the Republican Party didn't bother to check the signatures. Anybody who claimed to have 10,000 signatures, got rubber stamped by the Party, without even being checked.
  • This year, for the first time, the Party actually checked the signatures, and threw out some.
  • Now, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney turned in like 15,000 signatures.
    Since they had a huge "cushion", the Party decided that it was a waste of resources to even bother checking all of them. They spot checked a few pages, didn't see evidence of massive fraud (and unless there's massive fraud, then they made it), and said "good enough for us".
  • Newt, Perry, and company, turned in more like 10,001 signatures.
    Which would have been good enough, last few elections. But not this time.
    The Party checked their petitions, threw out a bunch (which, as I said, is perfectly normal and to be expected), and throwing out those signatures dropped them below 10,000.

    I have a personal theory that Ron Paul and Mitt Romney gathered 15,000 signatures, because they
    expected
    the Party to try to throw out their signatures, to keep them off the ballot. They expected the Party to be out to get them, and they prepared for it. Whereas Newt, Perry, and co., expected the Party to just approve them without bothering to check (and there is historical precedent for that assumption), and they were wrong

In short, the plaintiff's problem, here, isn't with Virginia's law. The law hasn't changed, people haven't had any trouble complying with it, before, and heck, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney didn't have any trouble complying with it, this time.

What changed, this election, wasn't the law. It was the Party deciding to check something that they hadn't checked, in the past. (And the campaign's decision to ignore one of the simple, well known, unwritten rules of politics: Give yourself a big cushion.)

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Hubbs

Hubbs

Posted
Posted
No, but his supporters will trumpet his very strong second as a moral victory. :)

----------

Actually, I could see him having a shot.

With only two choices on the ballot, and one of them "guaranteed" to win, and all of that, I could see a really low turnout. Whereas, if there's one thing you can say about Paul's supporters, they're zealous. The Paul People will show up and vote. The other folks might not.

In politics, the amount of enthusiasm is an important factor.

There's actually a much simpler scenario than that.

Let's say that a large chunk of the anti-Romney vote has coalesced around one non-Ron-Paul candidate by the time Virginians vote.

Who will the supporters of that candidate tell everyone to vote for? Not Mitt Romney.

Ron Paul could win because of Rick Santorum supporters.

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Larry

Larry

Posted
Posted
There's actually a much simpler scenario than that.

Let's say that a large chunk of the anti-Romney vote has coalesced around one non-Ron-Paul candidate by the time Virginians vote.

Who will the supporters of that candidate tell everyone to vote for? Not Mitt Romney.

Ron Paul could win because of Rick Santorum supporters.

Possible, but I'd consider it really unlikely.

Yeah, I would think that a big push could turn the primary into a "Mitt Romney: Yes or no" vote. But I don't see anybody putting the effort into Virginia.

As I understand it, there are several primaries that day.

The way I'd see it break, then, if there's only two names on the ballot in Virginia, is that all of the candidates will simply ignore the state, and spend their time and effort somewhere else. (I even see Romney doing that. "Why spend any money or effort in a state where my only opponent is Ron Paul?")

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chipwhich

chipwhich

Posted
Posted

The way I'd see it break, then, if there's only two names on the ballot in Virginia, is that all of the candidates will simply ignore the state, and spend their time and effort somewhere else. (I even see Romney doing that. "Why spend any money or effort in a state where my only opponent is Ron Paul?")

This.

The other supporters wont show up just to vote against Romney. Va will just be ignored.

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twa

twa

Posted
Posted
No, he didn't.

Where's twa? I need somebody to announce that Perry has a really good case, and then back it up by claiming that people said things that they didn't.

yes Larry ,the judge says it is unconstitutional...but allowable under time restraints

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/news/2012/jan/13/2/us-judge-hears-va-primary-ballot-case-today-ar-1608964/

Following the hearing, Joseph Michael Nixon, a lawyer for Perry, said he would have to consult with his client on whether or not to appeal.

Nixon said he was pleased that Gibney agreed Virginia’s residency requirement is an infringement on free-speech rights. “Americans deserve the right to talk to Americans about who is going to be their president,” said Nixon.

He said that under the rule even Perry himself could not have collected petition signatures in Virginia.,,

CLU of Virginia Executive Director Kent Willis, said, “For the ACLU, the most important part of the decision is the judge's recognition that the Virginia law violates the right of free speech.”

“This clearly unconstitutional law will now almost certainly be repealed by the General Assembly or struck down in court. Either way, its end is near,” said Willis.

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/01/13/breaking-perry-gingrich-santorum-and-huntsman-will-not-be-on-virginia-ballot/

Federal district court Judge John Gibney has just issued a ruling in Richmond finding that the Virginia requirement that ballot petition circulators must be state residents is a violation of the First Amendment. However, he also held that the four GOP candidates who failed to make it onto the Virginia ballot because they did not meet the 10,000-signature requirement had waited too late to raise their constitutional claims. (Perry did not file suit until the end of December and the other three candidates joined his lawsuit last week.)

Under the legal doctrine of laches, parties with a claim have an obligation to assert it and cannot engage in unreasonable or unjustified delay.

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Larry

Larry

Posted
Posted

Ah, I see.

The judge ruled (well, commented) that the part of the law requiring state residency violates the constitutional right of professional, out-of-state, (dare I say "carpetbagger"?) corporations to engage in Virginia politics.

(Sounds more like maybe an "interstate commerce" violation than a First Amendment one, to me. But then, I guess I'm one of those old timers (dare I say "conservative"?) who doesn't think that corporations have First Amendment rights.)

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DCsportsfan53

DCsportsfan53

Posted
Posted

VA is an open primary state, right? Might just have to go out and vote for Paul. Even though many of his ideas are bat **** crazy and I wouldn't want him as President he's probably the only potential candidate who isn't completely corrupt, morally bankrupt and in the pocket of the lobbying world.

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Larry

Larry

Posted
Posted
Ia a qualified candidate there a carpetbagger?

just admit you were mistaken and move on.

Actually, I could argue about things like whether a judge "rules", when he denies a preliminary injunction.

But yeah, I'd say that saying that "the judge ruled it unconstitutional" is certainly "close enough for government work".

Please consider this to be me, retracting my statement.

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