On December 28, Rocky De La Fuente submitted approximately 18,000 signatures, hoping to get on the Democratic presidential primary ballot in North Carolina. The law says candidates discussed in the news media are put on the ballot automatically. The North Carolina Board of Elections refused to put him on the ballot under that provision, so he used the alternate method of obtaining 10,000 valid signatures. It is believed he is the first presidential primary candidate in North Carolina history to attempt this method.
The signatures were all gathered in eleven days. So far, according to the North Carolina Board of Elections web page, 8,384 signatures have been checked, and only 4,423 of them were valid, for a validity rate of 52.8%. If that trend continues, he will fall short by approximately 500 signatures. In that case, he may be able to show that the county election boards did a poor job of checking the signatures.
Howard Dean had 11,000 validated signatures in North Carolina in 2004, but the primary was cancelled after a redistricting lawsuit pushed all the NC primaries after the national convention. NC then used a caucus.
Thank you.
Gary Cohen,
Please give details on case. That lawsuit case I want to read.
I recall hearing that Steve Forbes got on the ballot for the North Carolina Republican primary via petition.
It would take some fact checking to verify the thing about Forbes.
Keep up the good fight Rocky!
Is there a known deadline for the checking to be done?