During the 2012 presidential election season, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Rep. Ron Paul were the only candidates to appear on the Virginia Republican primary ballot, but the national primary race at the time also included Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, former Sen. Rick Santorum, and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
Virginia’s ballot access laws — the strictest in the nation — made it difficult for less-established candidacies to secure the needed votes in time for the election. In the case of the 2012 election, the 10,000 needed signatures — as well as the last four digits of each signers’ social security numbers, and including a minimum of 400 signatures from each of the state’s 11 congressional districts — proved to be too steep a hurdle for many to clear.
Robert Sarvis, a Libertarian candidate for the U.S. Senate, feels that this is unfair. A lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Rutherford Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Charlottesville, Virginia, with the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia challenges the state’s balloting requirements — which also give primacy to party-nominated candidates. Sarvis is listed as a co-plaintiff in this case against the Virginia State Board of Elections, along with several of the Libertarian Party’s candidates for Congress and an independent.
“There was a time in our nation’s history when a person’s vote counted for something more than merely the illusion of participation and when the people’s referendum at the ballot boxes brought about a change in the way government did business. That is no longer the case, thanks in large part to a corrupt political establishment that favors an elitist, two-party system whose primary aim is to maintain the status quo,” said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, according to a blog on the organization’s website.
“While voting is the very least that we are called to do as citizens, Americans are entitled under the Constitution to elect individuals to office capable of and willing to represent us, rather than being forced to choose from a limited field of individuals with the money and political backing to get on the ballot.”
Arguing that the state’s ballot access laws violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the suit claims that the act of posting the Democratic and Republican candidates first on a ballot disenfranchises third-party and independent candidates. This “bottom-half” positioning of non-major candidates on the ballot, coupled with the high signature requirements — 10,000 for presidential and Senate candidates, 1,000 for U.S. House candidates, 250 for state Senate candidates, and 125 for state House candidates — presents a perceived hostile environment for non-establishment candidates. Party candidates can count on the machinery of the party to help secure the signature requirements, and the Virginia Legislature is evenly divided and not likely to agree to ballot access changes easily.
In contrast, Indiana — home to the second-strictest ballot access laws in the nation — only requires 4,500 signatures for someone to qualify for the presidential primary.
Virginia’s ballot signatures law is a reflection of how a state adapts to the times and how the parties try to retain control of their nomination process. In 1988, Virginia held its first presidential primary as a move to get Southern centrist Democrats, such as Al Gore, in serious contention for the presidential nomination. This led to eight Democrats and six Republicans running for the state’s primaries, with basically any candidate qualifying for federal matching funds being eligible for the ballot. This resulted in the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and not Al Gore, winning the state’s Democratic nomination.
As the parties’ primaries must consider any candidate aligned with the party that would be eligible for the general election, rules that affect the way candidates can appear on party balloting also affect non-party candidates.
To avoid such confusion in the future, Virginia raised its signature requirement to 0.5 percent of the state’s registered voters. This requirement — which amounted to about 17,000 signatures in 1998 — effectively removed the need for primaries. In 2000, a “compromise” bill lowered the requirement for presidential and senatorial races to 10,000 signatures, but doubled the per district quota. The signature requirement requires that all signatures are witnessed by a “qualified voter” for the district of the signer, which tends to lead to challenges of candidates’ petitions. Many candidates cannot afford a statewide effort to solicit signatures, and roll checks on the names on many of the petitions typically find inconsistencies that are difficult to resolve.
It may be incorrect, however, to say that Virginia favors establishment candidates over independents. Virginia, for example, waives the filing fees for independent candidates for office — which is set at 2 percent of the position’s annual salary.