By Cole
Virginia’s GOP presidential primary is March 6. The only candidates on the ballot will be Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, in that order. They drew straws or something because our GOP has no truck with voodoo spelling like alphabetical order.
Here are the main rules for getting on the Virginia ballot:
- Collect 10,000 valid signatures from Virginia voters.
- Signatures must include at least 400 names each from the 11 congressional districts (that’s 4,400 of the names).
- People gathering signatures must be legal residents and eligible to vote.
See anything unfair or hard about this?
Paul and Romney did it with a few thousand signatures to spare, but it proved too much for Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich. (The other wannabes didn’t bother to try.)
Perry’s gatherers weren’t all Virginia residents, so some of his signatures were tossed out. Now Perry is suing Virginia in federal court to block the ballots from being printed until his name is included.
This puts Virginia in a bind because Perry’s hearing isn’t until January 13 and the ballots have to be printed and mailed to absentee voters 45 days before the primary.
Gingrich, who lives in Virginia, shrugged off his disqualification, saying one of his gatherers made up a bunch of names. He thought he could still win as a write-in candidate.
Joke’s on Newt. Virginia doesn’t count write-in votes in primaries.
But Newt’s still unperturbed. He probably expects to transcend mortal voting and ascend to the presidency by divine intervention. Hey, if the Supreme Court could do it for George Bush, why not?
What Rick Perry is GUARANTEED if his litigation prevails is a dead-last finish in Virginia. For all his big talk about states’ rights, he has shown the country he won’t hesitate to use federal power to stomp any state that personally crosses him.
But what I don’t get is why ANY of these primaries mean anything to anybody. They serve no purpose but to help the media fill time they’d otherwise use airing YouTube videos and tweets.
Who cares what a handful of nitwits in Iowa, New Hampshire, or Virginia think? The only special insight they have comes from partisan commercials and robocalls.
So go ahead, Perry. Sue the pants off Virginia and consummate your political suicide. You picked a nice spot for it.
Cats Working 
Another fun fact: ANYONE can vote in a Virginia primary–whether they’re registered Democrat, Republican or Independent. So… though I’m not usually a primary voting type, I’m trying to decide how I might impact the VA primary in some small way… get all my facebook friends to get their facebook friends to write in Sarah Palin or something—in the margin or really tiny on a “chad”— Now I know they don’t count write ins, but wouldn’t it be fun to see the story of the microscopic Palin write-in votes the evening Fox news? Oh, wait, by then there won’t BE any evening Fox news–at least not on Verizon. Oh, Virginia, I love you!
Interesting plan, but if you vote in the Va. GOP primary, you must sign a loyalty oath, stating you will vote for the Republican nominee in the November election. I’m not making this up. I suppose this is their way of keeping out those with consciences who may find the eventual candidate unelectable. But signing any damn thing is a no-brainer for the GOP zombie hordes (a.k.a. Cantor supporters), who would gladly follow off a cliff whatever wackjob they nominate.
Note to non-Virginia readers: Va. Democrats don’t make voters sign any pledges.
Loyalty oath?? What is done to you if you break it? Holy shit,I had no idea
ZM
The loyalty oath is truly disturbing.Assuming a secret ballot, who would ever know the candidate on chose? So either ballots in Va. aren’t secret, or the inventors of the party loyalty oath actually think that signing a piece of paper will govern a person’s behavior.
In Illinois, no slouch when it comes to political corruption, you have to declare party affiliation to vote in a primary, but that has nothing to do with the general election.
Happy New Year, everyone! I hope the Mayans aren’t right about 2012 being the end of the line.
Yes, a loyalty oath. What will those wacky Republicans think of next? There’s no way to enforce it without totally rigging elections because the ballots are supposed to be secret. (Karen said they replaced the machines with the punch cards that created hanging chads with paper ballots with bubbles to be colored in, that get fed into a machine that counts them, so you can see exactly which voter of the day you were.
You don’t have to declare a party when you register to vote in Virginia, so the Repubs are trying to ensure fidelity (and keep Dems out) with this oath. As we all know, those people will sign anything. Just ask Bachmann.
Wonder how Perry and Gingrich would run the country if they can’t manage to follow the rules to get onto the Va. ballot… Happy New Year, let’s hope 2012 is a better year than last year!
I say whoever gets the most darts stuck in them,wins
Zappa, I like the dart idea! Gingrich would probably win because he has the most surface area.
Mauigirl, not only did Perry and Gingrich do the bare minimum to qualify, but none of the rest of the candidates even tried. Kind of like Sarah Palin thinking she can run the country when she couldn’t hack it running a relatively deserted place like Alaska.