The Glade 4.0

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Bachman, Santorum, and the rest of the herd didn't even submit signatures. This leaves Mitt Romney and Ron Paul as the only candidates on the ballot.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Sounds like VA's requirements are screwed up, if only 2 of the candidates can get in.

Oh well, that can only be good for Paul.

did =/= can

This strikes me as being a major failing of the rejected candidates' campaigns, not of the VA requirements. I mean, that's really more or less the point of having these requirements in the first place. The signature requirements are as much about whether or not you can run a competent campaign as they are about demonstrating sufficient voter support (if not moreso).

The Gingrich campaign in particular fumbled this one badly. Everyone knew that VA had a strict hurdle, but he deliberately went into it with only about 10-15% more signatures than the bare minimum to qualify. That's either incompetent or lazy campaign management. I'm going to guess the former. His campaign manager's response to all this was that they would "wage an aggressive write-in campaign", apparently unaware of the fact that Virginia doesn't permit that for presidential primaries. If you're going to manage a presidential campaign, these are the sorts of things that you ought to know about. I don't think he did his due diligence.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

I'll buy that. Still, I'm increasingly... annoyed... by the higher and higher hurdles that candidates must clear to get on ballots. All it takes to clear them? More money. We're heading in the wrong direction.