Every week, the Americans Elect web page shows the new weekly national signature total, for all states combined. This week’s tally is 2,313,079, and increase of 60,042 signatures in the past week. The effort seems to be accelerating.
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According to this news story, the Virginia Republican Party started the petition validation process on Friday, December 23, and is using volunteers.
On December 22, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev gave his last “state of the nation” address. He was elected President in March 2008 and he is not seeking a second term in 2012. He said, “We need to give all active citizens the legal chance to participate in political life”, and then recommended that ballot access laws be eased.
Currently, presidential nominees of political parties need 2,000,000 signatures, and independent presidential candidates need 3,000,000. The Medvedev proposal would reduce these to 100,000 signatures for nominees of political parties, and 300,000 for independent presidential candidates.
If the rules pass, they won’t take effect in time for the 2012 election. Filing for that election closed on December 15, 2011 for independent presidential candidates, and on December 20, 2011, for the presidential nominees of parties. The 2012 presidential election is being held on March 4. See this story.
December 22 was the deadline for Republican presidential candidates to submit petitions to be on the Virginia presidential primary ballot. Four candidates submitted petitions. However, two of them submitted fewer than 12,000 signatures. Mitt Romney submitted 16,026; Ron Paul submitted 14,361; Rick Perry submitted 11,911; and Newt Gingrich submitted 11,050. The requirement is 10,000, with at least 400 from each U.S. House district in the state.
No one else submitted a petition. Candidates who are on all other Republican presidential primary ballots so far, but who did not submit a petition, include Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, and Rick Santorum.
The Republican Party of Virginia says it will check the petitions for validity. However, the party had already previously said that any candidate who submitted at least 15,000 would be deemed to have submitted a valid petition. It would be surprising if the Perry and Gingrich have enough valid signatures. It is generally unheard of for any petition (other than one with a very tiny requirement) to have a validity rate as high as 83%. See this story, which is the source of the information for the exact number of signatures submitted.
On December 22, a Marion County Circuit Court ruled that Charlie White, who was elected Indiana’s Secretary of State with a 57.1% share of the vote in November 2010, was not a validly registered voter when he filed for office. The 8-page decision is here. Therefore, because he was registered at an address which was not his actual residence, the court concluded that White should be removed from office. Under Indiana law, assuming the decision is not reversed on appeal, Vop Osili, the Democratic Party nominee for that office in 2010, who only polled 37.0% of the vote, becomes the new Secretary of State. Osili was elected to the Indianapolis city council last month and is Nigerian-American. His first name is an acronym for “Voice of the People.”
White and the state have asked the Circuit Court to stay its ruling, while the case is appealed.
It seems fundamentally undemocratic that the decision of the voters should be set aside, just because the winning candidate filled out an incorrect declaration of candidacy. At the least, one would wish that the office would now be declared vacant, and perhaps a special election to fill it could be held in November 2012. The term of office is four years. White is facing separate criminal charges in another state court; he is charged with the crime of putting an incorrect address on his voter registration form and his declaration of candidacy. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.