The West Virginia Libertarian presidential petition probably doesn’t have enough valid signatures. The campaign is continuing to obtain more, and will submit them soon. If the first batch is insufficient, a particular experienced attorney will file a lawsuit against the deadline. The basis for the lawsuit will be Anderson v Celebrezze.

The Pennsylvania Constitution Party will probably also collect more signatures and turn them in, and bring a lawsuit against Pennsylvania’s August 1 deadline. The party was short approximately 2,500 signatures on the August 1 deadline. The Pennsylvania Green Party will probably join in with this lawsuit, or file a similar lawsuit, if it can collect another 12,000 signatures in Pennsylvania in the next few weeks.

The West Virginia Constitution Party submitted 20,610 signatures to be on the 2008 ballot for president. Some of them had been turned in previously and have an 80% validity rate. Unfortunately the petition only counts for president. In order to count for Governor, all the signatures would have been due in May. So although all the petitions have the gubernatorial candidate listed, the petitions will only be useful for putting Chuck Baldwin on the ballot.

How awesome am I?

Not very awesome, judged by this.

What the SOS was referring to was 15,536 raw signatures on the latest turn-in.

What you are referring to is an estimated validity of 15,560 valid signatures out of all turn-ins combined, assuming the validity on the final turn-in is the same as on the previous one(s), which may be the case – or not.

Two entirely different things.

Something tells me they don’t think they’re gonna make it…….

Unless they can get an extension, they aren’t. This is what I meant by my mathematical analysis above. Of the remaining signatures unchecked, the Barr campaign will need almost a 92% valid signature to total signature submitted rate to get on the ballot (assuming about 18,000 signatures were submitted by the “deadline”). 92% valid rate is most unlikely to happen.

Very draconian requirements, as one would expect…

Theoretically, an invalid signature is a signature of somebody who is not a registered voter.

Surprisingly, many people don’t know where they are registered. Usually students and low income folks that move a lot. These are people most likely to sign a petition.

Here in Ohio, as of ‘04 and the Nader campaign, a signature must be legible AND precisely as signed in the Board of Elections. Doctors can no longer sign petitions. A signature that uses a middle initial at the BOE must use the middle initial on the petition. Also, the petition gatherers must not live in a “Residence Inn” type of apartment, no matter how long they have lived there. These are not considered permanent addresses.

Most petition forms have a space for the date. A petition signer must use the correct date. Again, many people don’t know what day it is. A date out of sequence will have an entire petition page thrown out.

Extraneous marks. An extraneous mark is a squiggle in the margin of a petition to get the ink of a pen running. Again, this will throw out the entire petition page.

Many times, petition checkers at the BOE will contact signers to find out if they “really” signed a petition. A very subtle form of intimidation.

Collecting signatures at a festival or gun show seem to be the easy way to go. But whoever asks for the signature MUST be the person to sign at the bottom as the circulator. This can get real confusing when you have a group of people circulating at a festival and every county must be on a separate petition form.

Some States, such as West Virginia, used to require petitions must be collected by “Magisterial District”, rather than by Congressional District or by county. Magisterial Districts don’t follow county lines or Congressional lines. And nobody seemingly knew where the boundaries were.

There is more, but this is what comes to mind right now.

PEACE
Steve

Almost

The newspaper article cited a few comments above says of the Constitution Party:

*”His group submitted 971 pages of signatures just prior to 5 p.m., the final deadline. That should be about 15,536 signatures, according to the secretary of state’s estimation.”*

My article, written yesterday, claimed:
*”My source claims over 20,000 signatures have been turned in for West Virginia. If the validity rate holds, approximately 15,560 signatures are valid with only 15,118 required.”*

My estimation: 15,560
SoS’s estimation: 15,536

How awesome am I?

http://blog.bobbarr2008.com/2008/08/02/latest-on-wv-ballot-access-efforts/

Here is what happens at this point…the campaign will keep collecting signatures while petitions are being verified. We will file a lawsuit seeking more time to petition if we don’t reach the required number, which is 15,118 verified signatures.

Something tells me they don’t think they’re gonna make it…….

It means only 865 were valid.

Barr’s tally of valid names stood at 865, out of 2,822 reviewed, before the former Georgia congressman’s campaign dropped off the additional petitions Friday.

Does that mean that only 865 out of 2,822 were valid, or that SO FAR 865 of the 2,822 were valid but they were still checking…

I don’t know a lot about this stuff, but 865/2,822 seems like a really shitty validation rate by any standard.

We shall see soon enough, I guess. I am assuming they are going into this with diminished expectations or we would have expected some kind of triumphant-sounding official word from Barr2008 by now…?