Perry files emergency motion to get his name on Va. primary ballot

Texas Gov. Rick Perry filed an emergency motion Wednesday asking a federal judge to order that his name be included on Virginia's Republican primary ballot.

Perry had filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Richmond on Tuesday against the three members of the State Board of Elections and state GOP chairman Pat Mullins, challenging his exclusion from the March 6 primary ballot.

In the motion, Perry urges U.S. District Judge John A. Gibney Jr. to bar the elections board and Mullins from enforcing the state residency requirement for people who collect signatures for ballot access.

He also asks the judge to stop the elections board from holding its drawing to determine placement on the ballot and to order the elections board to print primary ballots that include his name.

The elections board held the drawing for ballot placement Wednesday morning. During a brief meeting at the state Capitol, members of the board determined that Texas Rep. Ron Paul's name will appear first, followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the only other candidate that the state GOP certified for the ballot.

This morning, the judge will hold a status conference in federal court. Judges typically use status conferences to get the parties together for planning purposes to see what the issues are, set a course of action and discuss deadlines or other milestones in the case.

During the elections board's meeting, the three members did not comment specifically on Perry's lawsuit. But after the meeting, two of the members, Chairman Charles E. Judd and Secretary Donald Palmer, raised logistical concerns. They said an injunction requiring the addition of Perry's name to the ballot would pose difficulties given the Jan. 21 deadline to mail absentee ballots 45 days ahead of the primary.

"There's so much that has to be done I don't know physically how we'd be able to do it, and that's my concern," Judd said.

Palmer agreed.

"What we did today was the whistle for the train to leave the station," he said. "Right now election officials are preparing and programming the ballots for the overseas and military voters.

"Time is of the essence if there is going to be any additional names. That deadline is the 21st of January, but this process takes two to three weeks of getting the ballots tested, prepared, printed, shipped back to the election officials and sent out to the overseas military."

Perry's suit challenges a provision of state law that says campaign workers who collect voters' signatures for ballot access must be eligible to vote in Virginia. The rule matters to Perry because even valid signatures for ballot access do not count if the person who circulated the petitions is not eligible to vote in the state.

According to the court file in U.S. District Court, summonses were issued Wednesday to Judd, Palmer, board Vice Chairwoman Kimberly Bowers and Mullins, chairman of the state GOP; they have 21 days to respond.
Bowers said Wednesday morning that she had not yet been served and declined to comment on the suit.

On Saturday, Mullins certified to the State Board of Elections that Romney and Paul were the only two candidates who had amassed the required 10,000 signatures of registered voters in order to qualify for the ballot.
Volunteers who assessed the signatures at state GOP headquarters determined that Perry and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich did not collect enough valid signatures to qualify.

Also Wednesday, CNN reported that Gingrich, campaigning in Iowa ahead of Tuesday's caucuses, said that someone his campaign hired to help him get on the Virginia ballot submitted fraudulent signatures.

"We hired somebody who turned in false signatures. We turned in 11,100 — we needed 10,000 — 1,500 of them were by one guy who frankly committed fraud," Gingrich reportedly told a woman at a campaign stop in Algona, Iowa.