Michigan requires petitions signed by one-half of 1% of either major party’s last presidential vote, for a candidate to qualify for the January 15 presidential primaries. The due date was October 23, 2007. Of course, this procedure only applies to Democratic and Republican presidential candidates who were not automatically placed on the ballots by Democratic and Republican party leaders.
Two groups had announced that they were petitioning: Alan Keyes had said he would gather the needed 11,569 signatures to get on the Republican presidential primary ballot, and a Draft Al Gore group had said it would gather the needed 12,396 signatures to place Gore on the Democratic ballot. However, neither group succeeded. The Gore group only obtained 3,000 signatures. It is not known how many Keyes collected.
Keyes is really stumbling this time around. His website is desperately trying to raise money to get him on the ballot in Arkansas and South Carolina.
And meanwhile they’ve only gotten 1,800 pledges of support on their free-to-sign form. He’s been trying this for weeks and only netting a handful of new signups per day.
Keyes 2008 is DOA… unless something drastically changes.