Virginia requires 5,000 signatures for presidential primary candidates to get on a ballot. December 13 was the deadline. Fourteen candidates submitted petitions: Michael Bennet, Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, Deval Patrick, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren, Marianne Williamson, and Andrew Yang. Originally Castro was left off the list, but now he is on the list.
There is no Virginia Republican presidential primary.
There were raw counts. Patrick filed 5981 which means he needs an 83.6% validity rate. Virginia slso requires 200 from each of 13 congressional districts.
Some of the last filing candidates were in the 7000 to 7500 range, which would suggest that circulators were told to turn in everything you have.
Julián Castro and John Delaney did not file.
Julian Castro also submitted a petition. I just read a news story about that and I amended the post.
If I’m not mistaken this is the 3rd primary in which Delaney has failed to file. I wonder when he’s finally gonna call it quits since he’s basically been self-funding from the beginning.
Here is an update to an earlier article that said all but Castro and Delaney had filed.
https://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/elections-officials-add-castro-to-the-democrats-seeking-to-make/article_8cdf0866-188b-5839-a6ef-50dcb7a5b301.html
He filed 5400 signatures, with 200 from each of 13 CDs. This makes it likely that they were rushing to get enough from far corners of the state, and get them to Richmond, and did not have any opportunity to pile signatures in NoVa. Perhaps the reason other papers couldn’t be found was because they were stuck to the back of a petition.
He will require 92.6% validity.
200 spread UNCON — Never same number of voters in each CD.
@DR,
What is unconstitutional is that the number of voters varies among CDs.