The Virginia deadline for independent presidential petitions, and the presidential nominees of unqualified parties, is August 26. The state received four petitions that may have enough valid signatures: for Rocky De La Fuente, Gary Johnson, Evan McMullin, and Jill Stein. Because most of the Johnson signatures were turned in early, the state has already determined that Johnson petition is valid. The state is still working on checking the Stein, McMullin, and De La Fuente petitions.
The Constitution Party submitted a petition, but it has already been held not to have enough valid signatures, because the number of signatures was below 5,000, and the requirement is 5,000. The Independent Green Party turned in a petition for Gail Parker, but it only has 4,312 signatures, so it is not valid.
Since November 1997, the only ballot-qualified parties in Virginia have been the Democratic and Republican Parties.
I heard that Better For America candidate for President, Evan McMullin, started a petition in Virginia shortly before the deadline. I am not surprised they failed.
Andy, I re-wrote this blog post because I just learned that McMullin did file 9,600 signatures in Virginia, at least his campaign says so.
Since Castle didn’t make it, I was going to ask about the Independent Green Party of Virginia (gave him and Chuck Baldwin their ballot line in ’08), but decided to research it myself and found this little tidbit on their Wiki page: “In January 2009 the right-wing Constitution Party of Virginia gave the Independent Green Ballot Access Committee $25,000.” Things that make you go hmmmmm.
We did get 9,600 signatures in Virginia.
Yes, there was an article about it. McMullin (who still has not picked a veep!) seems more like a PR stunt than serious candidate.
9600 signatures obtained over such a short period of time is impressive. However, it’s not a done deal that he’ll be on the ballot. Those signatures still have to be validated. There’s also an additional requirement that there be at least 200 signatures from each of the 11 Virginia Congressional districts. So the signatures have to be broadly distributed throughout Virginia.
Jeff – just to add a bit, the Independent Greens didn’t have an *automatic* ballot line and never have, but had petitioned for (and pleaded with) Michael Bloomberg to run that year, and since he declined, in search of a candidate to substitute they were basically willing to accept the most lucrative partner. While their spirit of cooperation among all independent and 3rd party candidates is laudable, it’s a party that prostitutes itself to anyone willing to run and give them some attention. Their three political planks seem to be as follows: 1) endorse as many non-duopoly candidates as possible, whether or not they want such endorsement or have any desirable ideology, 2) expand light rail, rinse, repeat, 3) carry Michael Bloomberg’s babies (regardless of one’s biology).
Well the IGP is certainly not running Castle this year.
So it’s clear that the LP will have 50 state access at this point – but what is taking so long in New Hampshire? Wasn’t the petition deadline in the FSP state weeks ago?
The New Hampshire deadline for completed petitions to be delivered to town clerks was August 10, but the deadline for the Libertarians to go around to the town clerks, to collect and deliver the results (the town’s determination of how many signatures are valid) to the Secretary of State is in early September.
Holy cow, how in the heck did Evan McMullin get that many signatures that quickly in Virginia? I know people who were petitioning in Virginia, and the ones I know did not get a hold of the Evan McMullin petition until 4 days before the deadline.
My guess is that the validity rate for McMullin’s petitions is going to be really, really low. You can’t rush that many signatures like that and have time to ensure quality petitioning practices. Heck, even 90 days here in IL is difficult, let alone a week or two in McMullin’s case.
I’m optimistic about Jill Stein’s petition though, her campaign has been on a ballot access winning streak in the past week or so.
To the points made about McMullin’s petitions in Virginia, there is an additional requirement beyond 5000 signatures overall. The Petition has to have at least 200 valid signatures from each of Virginia’s eleven congressional districts. If they think they can get valid petitions by concentrating solely in the population centers of Northern Virginia, Richmond, and Hampton Roads, they may miss the ballot for lack of enough valid signatures in District 9, which is in Virginia’s far southwest. Districts 1 and 6 to a lesser extent are away from the big populaton centers as well.
McMullin’s website is saying they are “on the ballot” in Virginia. That could still end up being the case, but it’s a bit premature to say that. Jill Stein, who turned in 11,000 signatures total still hasn’t been validated, though in her case, it seems that she had a partial turn in earlier and some of her signatures have already been validated.
Johnson, on the other hand, I think is confirmed for the ballot. The Virginia LP had a partial turn in earlier, and I think they were close. They didn’t need many more valid signatures, and I believe the State BOE was able to validate their remaining signatures fairly quickly.
I am pretty sure that it is actually 100 valid petition signatures out of each congressional district. It used to be 200, but got cut in half when the overall requirement for President in Virginia got cut in half after the 2012 election.
The law before 2013 required 400 signatures from each US House district. The 2013 law lowered that to 200 in each district.
Distribution requirements are silly. When the state counts the votes to see who won the election, there is no requirement that the winner received votes in each district. Whoever gets the most votes wins, period. So what difference does it make where the petitioning candidate’s support comes from? In a statewide race, all signatures of registered voters should be equal, no matter where the signer lives.
The Independent Green Party supports Green Party nominee Dr. Jill Stein(G) for President in 2016, as it did in 2012.
Thanks for the story. Sorry to say as regards the Independent Green Party, the story is wrong. In January 2016, the Independent Green Party of Virginia a petition drive with Michael Bloomberg on the ballot line for President. The objective was to convince Michael Bloomberg to seek the Green Party nomination for President. The second objective, was to provide a ballot line for the Green Party’s Dr. Jill Stein, should Bloomberg withdraw.
Bloomberg did withdraw. A two-thirds majority of the Independent Green Party executive committee decided that Dr. Jill Stein had generated enough support that Dr. Stein would be able to hire paid petitioners to get n the Virginia ballot.
The Indy Green Party petitioners (except one person) stopped gathering signatures for the IG ballot line. Some Indy Green Party petitioners shifted to gathering signatures for Dr. Stein and the other state Green Party ballot line.
Only Gail Parker continued. Mike Bloomberg’s name remained on the petition as the presidential candidate. Had the petition drive succeeded, Bloomberg would have had to withdraw his name. Then, under Virginia law, the Independent Green Party could have selected a substitute, or chose to forfeit the ballot line.
There was never any intent to put Gail Parker on the ballot only in Virginia as an Independent Green Party nominee for President.
Gail Parker is one of 3 Independent Green Party endorsee/nominees on the ballot for U.S. House in Virginia.
The Independent Green Party is proud of it’s work with Independents and Greens across the political spectrum from left to right across three decades.
The Indy Green Party offered congrats to Dr. Jill Stein and the state’s sister Green Party on the great success.
Across the decades Independent Greens have collected hundreds of thousands of petitions to put Independents and Greens on the ballot for local, state, and federal office. In most cases, the Indy Greens have done that on their own dime, and received no compensation.
McMullin’s campaign contacted the Independent Green Party. The Independent Green Party chose not to work with his them.
McMullin’s facebook on post, “Thanks to our great volunteers!” was, of course a lie.
McMullin was offering $4 to $5 dollars a signature. Volunteers did not collect those signatures.
On final point. The deadline, according to Ms Reiko at the Virginia State Board of Elections was noon friday. McMullin’s facebook post was 1:00pm – I believe. That means there is a lawsuit available to disqualify him, just on the time deadline.
My guess is, he doesn’t make the ballot. But we will see.
Green Party Voter–I was a last minute volunteer for Mr. McMullin, but couldn’t work the day needed. No pay was ever mentioned, nor would it have been sought.