Walter Patton, an independent candidate for Mayor of Meridian, Mississippi, doesn’t know yet if his name will be on November ballot. He got the needed 50 valid signatures, but after he submitted them, some of the signers say they want to remove their names. Most states, including Mississippi, have no procedure for signers to remove their names after the petition has been submitted. See this story.

In the absence of a statutory provision covering withdrawal of signatures, it seems inappropriate to let signers withdraw their signatures after the petition has been submitted. If that were allowed generally, opponents of any petition (whether a candidate petition or a petition for a ballot measure or a recall petition) could sign petitions insincerely, and then demand that their names be removed. That would violate due process for the petitioning groups, because they could never know if they had enough signatures before it was too late.