[EL] 3 Republican presidential candidates prefer to pay $5, 000 to getting 296 signatures

[Scott F. Bieniek]

In my opinion, the additional $5,000 to the DC GOP was well worth it for
the candidates. The requirement is signatures from 1% of REGISTERED
Republicans. Over 75% of the District's voters are registered Democrats.
Only 6.5% are registered Republicans (17% have no party affiliation).

The DC GOP offered to help candidates collect signatures at their events in
November/December, but I don't think that alone was enough to collect the
required signatures.

Moreover, you could not pull the petition until mid-November, and you had
to have your full slate of delegates prepared BEFORE pulling the petition.
If you took the $10,000 option, you had until the filing deadline to
identify your delegates and alternates.

One final point. It is my understanding that it was the Democrats that
requested the pay-in-lieu-of-signature option that was passed by emergency
legislation by the DC council. That would suggest that even Chicago found
it daunting to collect the necessary signatures in DC.

Given comments from other general counsel for presidential candidates, I
don't think it comes as a surprise that we spent an inordinate amount of
time and resources on ballot access on the Cain campaign.

In my opinion, there has to be a better way of determining who appears on
the presidential preference ballot in most states. The Virginia story this
cycle and lingering questions about whether McCain and Obama even qualified
for the ballot in Indiana in 2008 are tragic. And next week in New
Hampshire, a record 30 candidates will appear on the GOP ballot. Recent
polling suggests that only four have a realistic shot of securing 10% of
the vote and earning at least one delegate to the national convention.

If anyone on the list is working with their state party or state
legislature to change their ballot access rules, I'd be happy to share my
experiences with them.

Scott F. Bieniek
General Counsel
Friends of Herman Cain, Inc.

On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 5:28 PM, Richard Winger <richardwinger at yahoo.com>wrote:

> Yes, 1% of the number of registered Republicans in D.C.
>
>
> Richard Winger
> 415-922-9779
> PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
>
> --- On *Thu, 1/5/12, Vince Leibowitz <vince.leibowitz at gmail.com>* wrote:
>
>
> From: Vince Leibowitz <vince.leibowitz at gmail.com>
>
> Subject: Re: [EL] 3 Republican presidential candidates prefer to pay $5,
> 000 to getting 296 signatures
> To: richardwinger at yahoo.com
> Cc: law-election at uci.edu
> Date: Thursday, January 5, 2012, 2:07 PM
>
>
> Where do they come up with the idea of 296 valid signatures? Is that the
> percentage of a particular previous turnout in another election, as it is
> in some states, or is that just an arbitrary number?
>
> V
>
> On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 12:08 PM, Richard Winger <richardwinger at yahoo.com<http://mc/compose?to=richardwinger@yahoo.com>
> > wrote:
>
>
> http://www.ballot-access.org/2012/01/05/newt-gingrich-ron-paul-and-rick-perry-all-pay-5000-extra-instead-of-getting-296-valid-signatures-in-d-c/
>
> I think this behavior shows how onerous even a small petition requirement
> can be.
>
> Richard Winger
> 415-922-9779
> PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
>
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>
>
> --
> _______________________________
> Vince Leibowitz
> Principal Consultant
> The Dawn Group
> vince.leibowitz at gmail.com <http://mc/compose?to=vince.leibowitz@gmail.com>
> vince at dgtexas.com <http://mc/compose?to=vince@dgtexas.com>
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