On September 14, U.S. District Court Judge Irene C. Berger, an Obama appointee, issued an opinion in West v Warner, s.d., 2:20cv-570. West had submitted approximately 14,000 signatures to be an independent presidential candidate in West Virginia, but election officials found he didn’t have as many as 7,145 valid; instead only about 6,400 were valid.
West sued to say that the state must give him a chance to re-validate signatures. But the Judge said if he was concerned that the checking process wouldn’t be accurate or fair, he should have submitted his petitions on a piece-meal basis. Instead he turned all of them in on the August 3 petition deadline. It is true that West Virginia will permit petitions to be submitted in stages. The judge also said he didn’t submit any evidence of any particular signature that had been unfairly rejected. Here is the 10-page opinion.
Richard, Any news on Marshall Wilson’s gubernatorial case which is still pending declaratory judgement review?
There is a status conference on October 23, 2020.
Oh great. A week before the election. Brilliant! Yeah, I think we all know how that’ll turn out. Thanks for the update.
ONE voter forms – candidates and ballot issues.
That is a pretty bad validity rate. West Virginia has a pretty good rate of voter registration, so the petition circulators must not have done a very good job, but then again, these kind of results are to be expected when you do things at the last minute.