A majority of the candidates who set out this year to qualify for the Georgia general election ballot by petition have already failed to qualify.  The two statewide independent candidates, Brad Bryant for Schools Superintendent, and Raymond Boyd, did not even collect the legal minimum, and so did not file any signatures.

Mary Norwood, independent candidate for Chair of the Fulton County Commission, submitted 33,000 signatures to meet a requirement of 22,598.  However, election officials never finished checking her petition, because she was four hours late to pay the filing fee.

Six independent candidates submitted petitions to run for the legislature.  Already, the petitions of two of them have been invalidated because they didn’t have enough valid signatures.  See this story, which says that one independent petition was apparently disqualified because some of the sheets were on eight-by-eleven inch paper, whereas others were on eight-by-fourteen inch paper.

There are still four independent candidates whose petitions aren’t checked yet.  They may or may not qualify.  The results will probably be known by August 6.  They are Chuck Pardue for State Senate 23rd district, and these state house candidates:  Brook Nevel, 51 st district; Allen Williamson, 82nd district; and Kirk Howell, 108th district.

State house incumbent Rusty Kidd in the 144th district is on the ballot as an independent, but he did not need to petition.  Georgia relieves independent incumbents of the need to submit a petition.  Kidd was first elected in a special election as an independent, and he didn’t need a petition in that election either, because Georgia doesn’t require any candidates in special elections to submit a petition.   UPDATE:  Kidd did need his own petition this year.  The law exempting incumbent independents from filing a petition does not apply to people who were elected in the previous election as independents, when the previous election was a special election.  Thanks to the commenter below for this correction.