Even though Virginia Board of Elections has already determined that the Gary Johnson and Jill Stein petitions are valid, the Board doesn’t expect to have checked the other two presidential petitions until September 1 or September 2. Those other petitions are for Evan McMullin and Rocky De La Fuente.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
Just wondering, can the Virginia petitions be challenged?
I’m a bit curious as to what made Johnson’s and Stein’s petitions so easy to verify quickly, and what is missing from De La Fuente’s and McMullins.
From what I’ve read, I understand that Johnson campaign turned in most of their signatures early. Verification started early, and they probably knew how close they were. Therefore, it didn’t take much work to verify the small number of additional signatures to clear the 5000 requirement.
This was somewhat the same situation with Stein. However, I understand she turned in about 3K early and about 7-8K at the deadline. The initial batch was about 70% valid, if I recall correctly. That means they still had quite a few signatures to check, yet they were able to do that by Saturday.
To me, this suggests the potential for problems in those other two petitions. Those problems could be either low validity rates, or problems meeting the additional (and not very well-advertised) 200 minimum per congressional district signature requirement, or both. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
The Virginia Board of Elections had employees working over the weekend of August 27-28, on petition checking, so I was surprised when I was told on August 29 that they won’t be done until September.
How did they decide which petitions to address first? Earliest filing, earliest completion, whatever they felt like doing first, educated guesses as to which would likeliest draw a lawsuit the state could lose (combining filer’s chance of completion/rejection and resources to pursue an appeal in court)?
Any new developments on this?