Federal Oligarch in a Robe (Judge) Says No to Perry

Yesterday a federal judge rejected Governor Rick Perry’s request for an emergency court order to require the Virginia Board of Elections to place his name on the Virginia primary ballot.

Barring any changes, only Mitch Romney and Ron Paul will appear on that primary ballot, both campaigns being able to produce the 10,000 valid signatures that state law requires.

You know, there are reasons for these “overly burdensome” requirements. It keeps candidates that aren’t really serious about running for president off the ballot. You know, candidates like Perry, Santorum, Gingrich, Bachmann and Huntsman.

And no, we’re not done with this. Not yet

The judge left it open for consideration, setting a January 13^th date to hear arguments.

The deadline for primary ballot printing in Virginia, however, is January 9^th.

So what’s the point? Why schedule a hearing after the ballots have already been printed? You’re going to just love this. If the judge finds that the Perry arguments are sufficiently valid, and declares Virginia’s election law unconstitutional, allowing Perry, and I suppose Newt Gingrich, on the ballot, the judge can order that the state reprint the ballots.

Isn’t that nice? Every county in Virginia gets to reprint enough ballots for every Republican voter. Now in 2008 McCain got 1.7 million votes so it is safe to say that that is a working estimate of the number of voters that will need primary ballots. And having researched it, paper ballots are specialty items to print and run about 30 cents per ballot in printing costs. That adds up to a little over $500,000 to reprint the ballots with Perry’s name on it.

That is, Perry not only is using a federal court to overturn a state law, if he succeeds he is going to cost the state another half a million dollars to get on the ballot.

Virginians should be “Fed Up” with Rick Perry by now.