Virginia better hope it’s over by Super Tuesday

Turns out we might not get the chance to vote at all for the Republican presidential nomination aspirant.

Several sources are reporting to BD that ballots for the primary are at all stop.

For one, Fox News reports that U.S. District Judge John A. Gibney Jr. has ordered the Virginia State Board of Elections to send directives to each of the state’s local boards, telling them not to print any absentee ballots until after the emergency motion is heard on Friday.

Second, we have this from Don Palmer, Secretary of the State Board of Elections. “The court orders all Electoral Boards to ‘refrain from sending out any absentee ballots’ until there is a hearing on the matter.”

Yikes.

This is a fiasco.

I did have the chance to ask Dr. Larry Sabato of the Center for Politics at Mr. Jefferson’s University his thoughts on this whole issue and how this makes Virginia look nationally:

“Virginia is just a sideshow now, thanks to our embarrassingly restricted ballot. Maybe Romney will stop by to grab some dough, and Paul may make an appearance or two. So what? The focus on Super Tuesday will go to states that have full ballots. Ohio will certainly get a lot of attention, for example. I doubt Virginia will be hosting any debates. The candidates still in the race can be expected to insist on a debate venue that is fair to all.

“Look at Sunday morning’s NBC debate: New Hampshire got several key questions included, via its panelists. Virginia will get none of that, at least until the fall.

“Virginia has a couple of black eyes thanks to a mismanaged primary process. Yes, the candidates are at fault for not submitting the signatures, though it would have been in the interests of the state party and Virginia as a whole if the party had helped the candidates with that task. That’s exactly what the state Democratic party does, even collecting thousands of signatures on its own for each candidate. If you are going to have the nation’s most onerous ballot qualification rules, then it isn’t a sin for a party to lend a helping hand. Then there was the disaster of the strict loyalty oath. Anyone familiar with Virginia history could have predicted how this would turn out. The Democrats lost a U.S. senator over the loyalty oath in 1970, and these oaths have been highly controversial since the 1920s, always costing a party with the general public, especially independents. Just plain stupid.

“The 2012 Virginia primary has been mismanaged about as badly as anything I’ve seen in recent years. And I can tell you for sure that it is the only Virginia story that has filtered into the consciousness of the national political community. Everybody outside Virginia looks at a ballot limited to Romney and Paul, coupled with a loyalty oath, and shrugs, ‘Same old Virginia.’ Killing the loyalty oath will help to ward off negative commentary, but the state will still be a Super Tuesday afterthought.

“Fortunately, this will all change in the fall due to our new swing-state status. We ought to be able to recover from the winter setback quickly. And if McDonnell ends up on the nominee’s short list, that will be one of the most covered stories of the year, whether he’s chosen or not.”

As a one of the keenest political observers in the country and a loyal Virginian, it’s hard to disagree with Dr. Sabato’s assessment.

Of course, with one exception – not only will this nomination probably be over by Florida, but it looks like the judicial process might have a shot of delaying Virginia’s vote anyway.

~sigh~

Of course, I still say our primary process helped the winnowing. At least we know that only Paul and Romney had the national organization capable of doing that which was necessary – in December.

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