Judge Rules Against GOP Candidates in Lawsuit Seeking Va. Ballot Access

District court Judge John Gibney ruled that republican candidates Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, John Huntsman(already out) and Rick Santorum will not be inserted into the Virginia ballots, for failing to reach the 10,000 signature requirement.

The plaintiffs may choose to appeal Gibney’s ruling to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond.

Source

The judge agreed with the candidates that the requirement that petition circulators be Virginia residents is a violation of the First Amendment’s free speech clause, citing numerous prior cases challenging similar laws. “Had the case been timely filed,” he wrote, “the Court would have ordered the [Virginia State Board of Elections] not to enforce the residency requirement for petition circulators, and the plaintiffs could have tried, with the expanded pool of campaign workers, to get the 10,000 signatures.” However, he had earlier expressed some skepticism as to whether this was really the cause of their failure to obtain the required number of signatures, noting that “Jerry Kilgore, the campaign manager for Perry in Virginia, testified that he collected over 13,000 valid signatures on a ‘shoe string’ budget using friends and family members during the 1997 election for Attorney General of Virginia.”

This is what I say to them:

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