In a recent news release (distributed by email and not posted to her campaign web site), GOP Senate candidate Jamie Radtke points to potential “confusion” in ballot access requirements due to delays by the General Assembly in setting the boundaries of Virginia’s eleven congressional districts. As many voters (and even longtime political activists) recently learned with regard to the Republican presidential candidates seeking access to the March primary ballot, Virginia requires statewide candidates to collect a minimum of 10,000 petition signatures, including 400 signatures from each of the congressional districts.
Radtke noted in a letter to Speaker of the House of Delegates William Howell and Senate Republican Leader Tommy Norment (PDF) that current rules set by the State Board of Elections state that the 400-per-district signatures must come from districts as redesigned (if they are redesigned) at the time the petitions are turned in for validation. This causes difficulty because it is not possible for a campaign to have an accurate count prior to the deadline, and there is no alternative for collecting additional signatures past the deadline if the numbers are inadequate.
Radtke asks the General Assembly leaders for assurance that the rules be modified so that current boundaries would be dispositive, rather than some yet-unknown boundaries that (she doesn’t add this, but I will) may or may not be approved by the U.S. Department of Justice in a timely manner under the terms of the Voting Rights Act.
Not only Republican candidates are concerned about these problems. Third-party and independent candidates for President and Congress are also facing impediments to getting their names on the ballot if this issue is not cleared up.
Election-law expert Richard Winger writes in Ballot Access News:
Virginia law regarding petitions for the presidential candidates of unqualified parties, and independent presidential candidates, says that these petitions must carry the names of presidential elector candidates. Furthermore, candidates for presidential elector have a residency requirement; the petition must list one elector candidate from each district, plus the two at-large electors.
Because no Virginia resident can know which district he or she will be living in, until after the new districts are drawn, it is impossible for a group, or an independent presidential candidate, to state to circulate the petition. The law says these petitions may start to circulate on January 1 of the presidential election year, but in practice, in 2012 so far, they cannot circulate yet. Virginia does permit stand-in presidential candidates, so if it weren’t for the presidential elector residency problem, any unqualified parties could be circulating petitions for president now. The only qualified parties in Virginia since 1997 have been the Democratic and Republican Parties.
Winger also points out that the ambiguity about congressional district boundaries is hobbling the ability of House candidates to circulate petitions, especially since there is a requirement that the petition circulator (but not the candidate) must live in the same district as the people signing the petition.
