Hans von Spakovsky, a former Republican member of the Federal Election Commission, has this article on the Heritage Foundation’s web page, about fraudulent ballot access petitions in the Indiana presidential primary in 2008. Both candidates who petitioned in the Democratic race qualified for the ballot, and the fraud was not discovered until years after that primary.

Von Spakovsky implies that only the Barack Obama petitions contained forgeries, but actually, both petitioning candidates in that Democratic primary submitted petitions that contained forgeries. Hillary Clinton was the only other candidate who petitioned. Indiana requires 4,500 signatures for anyone to get on a presidential primary ballot.

The article then mentions the 2012 Republican presidential primary in Virginia, when four petitions failed to gather enough signatures, and the Republican primary only included Mitt Romney and Ron Paul

Von Spakovsky concludes that because petition fraud exists, therefore voter fraud in general exists. Von Spakovsky is an ardent support of government photo-ID for voters at the polls. But the point that most people would make, concerning the Indiana and Virginia petition failures and problems, is that the presidential primary ballot access requirements in both states are too difficult. If even candidates such as Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton have trouble with such petitions, the ballot access laws should be relaxed. And, in fact, in 2013 the Virginia legislature did cut the number of signatures in half for presidential primary petitions, from 10,000 to 5,000 signatures.

On January 9, Alabama State Senator Cam Ward (R-Alabaster) reintroduced the same ballot access bill he had introduced in 2013. This year, the bill is SB 70. It lowers the number of signatures for newly-qualifying parties and non-presidential independent candidates from 3% of the last gubernatorial vote, to 1.5% of the last gubernatorial vote. It also eases the petition deadline for newly qualifying parties, from primary day, to three weeks after the run-off primary. In a presidential election year, when the first primary is in March, that would put the deadline in early May. In a midterm year, the deadline would be in early August.

On January 13, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Republican Party of Nevada v Miller, 13-442. This is the case in which some Republican nominees for presidential elector in 2012, and the state party, and some voters who want to vote for “None of these candidates” were told that they lack standing. They wanted to challenge the Nevada rules that say that even if “none of these candidates” wins, that has no effect. The plaintiffs argued that, therefore, voters who vote for “none of these candidates” are not being treated equally with other voters.