February 10 at noon was the deadline for Indiana candidates running in a primary to file. The Indiana Secretary of State’s web page now lists five candidates who filed for the Republican presidential primary ballot: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Patricia Inez Sandifer, who lives in Indiana. She only submitted one signature, her own. However, under Indiana law, anyone who files a petition for a primary ballot, no matter how few signatures, is on the ballot unless the person is challenged and the challenge succeeds.
On the Democratic presidential primary, only President Obama filed.
The challenge period in Indiana is now open, and closes next week. It seems somewhat likely that Rick Santorum will be challenged, because according to elections officials in Marion County, he does not have as many as 500 valid signatures from the 7th U.S. House district. The law requires presidential primary petitions to have 4,500 signatures, with at least 500 from each U.S. House district.
No one can predict if Patricia Sandifer will be challenged. Indiana’s policy of leaving candidates on the ballot, even if they didn’t submit the raw number of signatures required (assuming they aren’t challenged), only applies to primaries. Indiana would not print the name of someone on the general election ballot as an independent or minor party candidate if that person’s petition lacked the required number of signatures, whether anyone challenged or not.
The only state that leaves people on the November ballot, regardless of how few signatures they have, if they are not challenged, is Illinois. In 2008, an independent presidential candidate, John Joseph Polachek, filed one signature to be on the November ballot in Illinois, and no one challenged him, so he remained on the ballot.
The challenge system is basically subversive of democratic values, because typically, candidates are not challenged if they are not perceived as threatening to anyone, but they are challenged if they have the potential to receive a high vote total. So the challenge system perversely often means that the less support a candidate has, the more likely he or she is to appear on the ballot, relative to a candidate who has substantial support.
Santorum will not be on the VA ballot either. If he is kicked off of Indiana’s ballot, then he will find it hard to get the required 1144 delegates.
It’s not important really if Santorum gets 1144 or what ever the number is. It’s important for him and the #newt and the evangelicals who don’t want the newt and the powers that be who want Jeb or Chrispy or “not my man Mitch” who want a brokered convention or reasonable fact simile thereof that Mittens doesn’t get 1144.