VA Open Primaries, Candidacy

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So, here's a question...

I know someone who is soliciting petition signatures to get Mitt Romney's name added to the Republican ballot for the VA Open Primaries scheduled for February 2008. According to this individual, 10,000 signatures from across the state are required to get Romney's name added to the ballot.

My question is, if we want someone else's name added to the same ballot, what would it take? Do the people and Republican party of VA have what it takes to get another candidates name added to the ballot?

What about other parties? Can the citizens do the same for other parties? Are the requirements the same?

I'm not crazy about many of the candidates this go round at all and any help that can be given to those lacking in support could, potentially, go a long way.

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Where do I sign up?

Not that I have any great affection for Romney, but I believe everyone who wants should be on the ballot.

I'm pretty sure I saw that info at the Virginia State Board of Elections site: http://www.sbe.virginia.gov/cms/ the other day.

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Yesterday, while waiting to be admitted into the Stafford DMV office, there was a nice fellow collecting signatures to have Ron Pauls name added to the primary ballot. I happily signed the petition as I believe as Tess does. I don't think I'd vote for Ron Paul, but I believe he deserves to be on the ballot.

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Why the heck would a gun owner want to get a gun grabber like Romney on the ballot for???????????????

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Tess wrote:

Where do I sign up?

Not that I have any great affection for Romney, but I believe everyone who wants should be on the ballot.

I'm pretty sure I saw that info at the Virginia State Board of Elections site: http://www.sbe.virginia.gov/cms/ the other day.

So let me get this straight. A gun owner wants to make sure Mitt Romney, a person who favors very strict gun control gets in the VA primary??????????????????????????????????? WOW!!!!!

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GLENGLOCKER wrote:

Why the heck would a gun owner want to get a gun grabber like Romney on the ballot for???????????????

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Is it any worse than Guilliani being on the ballot? We know he's a gun grabber as well.

Not that I agree with these people running for office, but this is a free country. If an individual wants to be on the ballot, then we should not stop that person from being on it.

ETA: The petition is only to get the candidates name on the ballot. By signing the petition, one is not committing to vote for that candidate. Only that their name be added. Is it so bad to have more options come primary day in February?

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For those in Alexandria that would like to sign this petition, the Alexandria coordinator's contact info is:

Dean and Brooks Armandroff
(703) 299-9629 or (703) 624-8469
d_armand@yahoo.com
bwallgood@gmail.com

On a side note, does anyone know of other circulating petitions for the other candidates as well? I would certainly be open to signing those petitions, if I could get contact information for those individuals.

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GLENGLOCKER wrote:

Why the heck would a gun owner want to get a gun grabber like Romney on the ballot for???????????????

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Perhaps you should read the entire post.

Why on earth would I not support someone's right to run for office?

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So why aren't these candidates on the ballot? What requires one to 'get signatures'I couldn't find any info on the Election board www.

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VAopencarry wrote:

So why aren't these candidates on the ballot?

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This is one of the ways the 2 major parties control who gets elected and how they have institutionalized their power.

All these rules in each state are created by the legislatures, which in almost all cases are controlled by the 2 major parties.

They are usually administered by state agencies, whose heads are political appointees from the 2 major parties.

The people who enforce and administer the laws, procedures, and oversee the actual voting and count the votes are generally hired out of the rank and file functionaries of the 2 major parties

In most states they make it hard to get on the ballot and easy to get kicked off.

Even if you win as an independant legislator, most legislatures, and certainly congress, are institutionally controlled by the 2 major parties; all committee assignments, perks, office assignments, office budget allocation are all controlled by one or more of the 2 major parties.

Even if you win as an independant "executive" position (Governor, Mayor, President, County Exec, Supervisor, etc), you have no built in constituency in the legislature/council. It is a little better for an executive, though, as they have their own power base.

I speak as someone who once was a campaign coordinator of a mayoral race for an Independant candidate, and also as someone who used to be one of those rank and file political functionaries.

They make it like this on purpose, to institutionalize, entrench, and perpetuate their power. AND - they also use this power against less favored candidates from the 2 major parties as a way to hold onto their control of them. The major parties will provide the manpower to do signature canvassing for the favored candidates, but not so for the non-chosen ones

I much prefer the IT world to politics, and am glad I am out of that field. :lol::lol:

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Tess wrote:

GLENGLOCKER wrote:

Why the heck would a gun owner want to get a gun grabber like Romney on the ballot for???????????????

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Perhaps you should read the entire post.

Why on earth would I not support someone's right to run for office?

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Mitt Romney on Gun Control Former Republican Governor (MA)

Supports Second Amendment rights but also assault weapon ban Q: As governor you signed into law one of the toughest restrictions on assault weapons in the country. A: Let's get the record straight. First of all, there's no question that I support 2nd Amendment rights, but I also support an assault weapon ban. Look, I've been governor in a pretty tough state. You've heard of blue states. In the toughest of blue states, I made the toughest decisions and did what was right for America. I have conservative values.
Source: 2007 Republican Debate in South Carolina May 15, 2007
Will support assault weapons bill and Brady Bill The candidate reiterated his support for an assault weapons ban contained in Congress' crime bill, and the Brady law which imposes a five-day waiting period on handgun purchases. `I don't think (the waiting period) will have a massive effect on crime but I think it will have a positive effect,' Romney said. Source: Joe Battenfeld in Boston Herald Aug 1, 1994

and let's not forget Rudi's
[size="+1"] Rudy's Gun Control Agenda[/size]
by John Velleco
Director of Federal Affairs The 2007 version of Rudy Giuliani defends his past support of gun control as a necessary evil to fight crime in a big city.
When pressed about his views of the Second Amendment by Sean Hannity of Fox News, Giuliani attempted to tap dance around his gun control record without alienating the 290 million people who don't live in New York City.
The former mayor told Hannity that gun control was "appropriate" for the city, but that states and cities should be allowed to make those decisions locally.
"So," Hannity continued, "you would support the state's rights to choose on specific gun laws?"
"Yes, I mean, a place like New York that is densely populated, or maybe a place that is experiencing a serious crime problem, … maybe you have one solution there and in another place, more rural, more suburban, other issues, you have a different set of rules."
Apparently, in Giuliani's America law-abiding citizens in large cities would not enjoy the same constitutional liberties as the rest of the country. Why? Are city dwellers not as trustworthy as country folks? Are metro-Americans not deserving of the right to self-protection?
Disarming citizens because they live in a high crime area is taking away the most effective means of self-defense from the people who need it most. Creating mandatory victims is no way to fight a crime problem.[sup]1[/sup]
If Giuliani's gun control agenda was really limited 'only' to big cities, that would be disturbing enough. But the record shows that the Mayor continually tried to export his gun control agenda to the rest of the nation.
The new Giuliani of state's rights simply does not square with the Mayor of the '90s.
In 1993, before even being sworn in as mayor, Giuliani met with then-President Clinton at the White House to discuss national gun registration. Giuliani supported the Brady bill, which had recently passed, but argued that it didn't go far enough.
The President, largely crediting Giuliani for the idea, enthusiastically sent Attorney General Janet Reno off to develop a gun licensing and registration system.[sup]2[/sup]
The Clinton-Giuliani scheme was slowed only by the Republican Revolution of 1994.
In May of 1994, as the battle over the ban on certain semi-automatic firearms reached its height, Giuliani threw his support behind the ban. On the eve of the final vote, he noted that so-called assault weapons "have no legitimate purpose."[sup]3[/sup]
When the ban passed, Giuliani commented that, "This is an important step towards curtailing the indiscriminate proliferation of guns across the nation."[sup]4[/sup] [emphasis added]
When a lunatic attacked innocent civilians at the Empire State Building in 1997, Mayor Giuliani used the tragedy to again push for gun control beyond his city's limits.
"We need a federal law that bans all assault weapons, and if in fact you do need a handgun you should be subjected to at least the same restrictions -- and really stronger ones -- that exist for driving an automobile," the Mayor said.
"The United States Congress needs to pass uniform licensing for everyone carrying a gun."[sup]5[/sup]
When the Mayor did focus on City gun laws, which already were among the most stringent in the country, his effort was only to further disarm the law-abiding.
In 1998, Giuliani pushed a proposal that would require gun owners to use "trigger locks" on all firearms, thus rendering the guns useless in the even of an emergency. Such a law would be enforced, said the Mayor, through "criminal penalties and the revocation of gun permits."[sup]6[/sup]
If Giuliani had a federalist conversion, it did not occur in his first six years as mayor, for in 2000, he again took his gun control show on the road.
In becoming the first Republican mayor to launch a city lawsuit against gun makers, Giuliani complained that "less restrictive gun laws in other parts of the country" exacerbated the crime problem in New York City.[sup]7[/sup]
Giuliani is not only a long-time supporter of gun control, but his support was convenient to leading anti-gun Democrats eager for the appearance of bipartisanship.
A big-city mayor supporting gun control is hardly newsworthy. The fact that Giuliani is a Republican gave the story its man-bites-dog angle.
In the midst of the fight over the 1994 crime bill and semi-auto gun ban, Giuliani escorted President Clinton to Minnesota to stump for the bill. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune noted that, "Clinton seemed especially proud that New York's Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, as well as Philadelphia's Democratic Mayor Edward Rendell, agreed to accompany him on his trip."[sup]8[/sup]
New York Senator Chuck Schumer also gleefully accepted Giuliani's support of the semi-auto ban. According to a Newsday article, Schumer hoped Giuliani would "sway some skittish Republicans."[sup]9[/sup]
The following year, when the Republican controlled Congress tried to repeal the gun ban, Giuliani made the trip to Washington to testify against the repeal effort.
So, if the new Rudy Giuliani in fact supports state's rights in the area of gun control, it is a dramatic shift from the policies he has been advocating for over a decade.
This flirtation with federalism is merely a facade, however, for in the recent interview with Sean Hannity, Giuliani assured gun owners that he supports only gun control laws that are "reasonable and sensible." He then went on to defend his support of the Brady bill and the semi-auto ban, which are neither. [sup]10[/sup]

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So vote against him, for Pete's sake.

Because someone is on the ballot does NOT mean he's worthy of a vote.

Just that he's a natural-born citizen, over 35, who has been fourteen years a resident of the US.

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It would send a strong message from gun owners not to sign a petition to get these guys on the ballot.

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GLENGLOCKER wrote:

It would send a strong message from gun owners not to sign a petition to get these guys on the ballot.

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You don't send a message by NOT doing something.

I wouldn't send a message by NOT voting, for example.

You have the right not to sign your name on the petition, for the gods' sake. Why are you being so forceful because someone else believes differently than you do?

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If I'm being forceful it's because it really fustrates me to see gun owners go out of there way to get someone on the ballot that would infringe on our civil rights. Unless...... you belive in what they say. It would be like a Jew saying someone from the American Nazi Party should be all the ballot. I guess some people will never get it.

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GLENGLOCKER wrote:

If I'm being forceful it's because it really fustrates me to see gun owners go out of there way to get someone on the ballot that would infringe on our civil rights. Unless...... you belive in what they say. It would be like a Jew saying someone from the American Nazi Party should be all the ballot. I guess some people will never get it.

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When you get it -- when you understand there is more than one right enumerated in the Constitution -- let me know.

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Tess wrote:

GLENGLOCKER wrote:

If I'm being forceful it's because it really fustrates me to see gun owners go out of there way to get someone on the ballot that would infringe on our civil rights. Unless...... you belive in what they say. It would be like a Jew saying someone from the American Nazi Party should be all the ballot. I guess some people will never get it.

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When you get it -- when you understand there is more than one right enumerated in the Constitution -- let me know.

So now your willing to compomise on the one right that makes it possible for us to defend the rest???

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Tess wrote:

GLENGLOCKER wrote:

If I'm being forceful it's because it really fustrates me to see gun owners go out of there way to get someone on the ballot that would infringe on our civil rights. Unless...... you belive in what they say. It would be like a Jew saying someone from the American Nazi Party should be all the ballot. I guess some people will never get it.

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When you get it -- when you understand there is more than one right enumerated in the Constitution -- let me know.

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I'm having a hard time following the logic here. I see that it's important that citizens be able to run for president, and I support that. I would absolutely support these candidates being able to petition to be on the primary ballot. That being said, I don't think they have any right whatsoever to be on the ballot. Simply put they have the right to try to get on it, but they don't have the right to be on it as that's a right reserved to the citizens of the state in the form of needing 10,000 signatures.

And I believe there are excellent reasons to not support names being on the ballot. Because of the way elections are counted in this country two similar candidates can cut each other down by drawing off support from each other. I don't want better candidates undercut by weaker similar ones, and the only way I can enforce that is by not signing the petition for the weaker candidates.

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And you have every right not to sign. Just as I expect to be respected for my desire to help ANY candidate qualify - even though I disagree with that candidate's positions.

I believe every candidate who chooses to be there should be. If his supporters dilute someone else's strength, that strength couldn't have been very steadfast.

California had, what, 54 people on its ballot for governor when whatshisfacetherepublicangunhater was elected. Didn't stop that electorate from getting what they asked for.