The epic fail of the year award may well go to a very late entry: late yesterday, the Virginia Republican Party announced that Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry both failed to qualify for the Virginia primary ballot because too many of their signatures were disqualified. Add to that the fact that Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, and Rick Santorum didn’t even bother to submit signatures, and you now have only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul (both of whom did qualify, along with President Obama on the Dem side) appearing on the primary ballot. Adding to the humiliation is that Virginia is Gingrich’s adopted home state.
The best part about all of this is the astounding level of whining it has generated from the Gingrich campaign. Gingrich has claimed that the fact that he and Perry couldn’t be bothered to actually do the work of collecting valid signatures proves that Virginia has “a failed system,” and he has promised an “aggressive write-in campaign” for the Virginia primary.
OK, two major problems there. First, the “failed system” at issue is clearly that of the Gingrich operation, which, as many have noted, started out as a book tour and by accident became a presidential campaign. Sure, VA has tough ballot access rules. But they weren’t too much for, say, Dennis Kucinich in 2008 or Al Sharpton and Lyndon LaRouche in 2004. So, cry me a river Newt. If you can’t get your act together to collect a bunch of signatures, can you really run the federal government?
Second, there does appear to be the teensiest problem with Gingrich’s “write-in campaign” idea. This is from the Virginia statutes (emphasis mine):
At all elections except primary elections it shall be lawful for any voter to vote for any person other than the listed candidates for the office by writing or hand printing the person’s name on the official ballot.
Whoops. Newt Gingrich, call your office.
Patrick says
VA has open primaries. Dems in VA could totally F Mitt.
David says
There is apparently not even going to be a Democratic primary, so that actually seems like a real possibility.
Patrick says
Mitt is so screwed.
centralmassdad says
Virginia comes on Super Tuesday, and has a lot of delegates.
Perry has commenced litigation seeking access to the ballot.
Insert your popcorn joke here.
Christopher says
…since VA doesn’t even do partisan voter registration. The only way you can tell who good partisans are in voter ID and GOTV efforts are by their history of consistently pulling the same party’s primary ballot over several cycles. I don’t remember how it is determined if you are eligible to be a member of county party committees.