Richmond- Today (Wednesday, December 19, 2007) the Democratic Party of Virginia qualified six candidates for the February 12, 2008 presidential primary ballot.What happened to Chris Dodd? That's embarrassing.Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson all turned in enough signatures to the Virginia State Board of Elections to qualify to run in the Commonwealth. Chris Dodd did not file with the State Board of Elections by the December 14, 5:00 pm deadline.
In addition to the thousands of signatures each of the candidates submitted, the DPVA collected more than 7,300 others.
"The Dodd campaign insisted it had delivered its petitions to the elections board, but the board had no record that it had done so."
First off, if a campaign was to file under the 10,000 signature mark they needed to wait for the Democratic Party to file first to take advantage of their signatures.. I was there from 4:10 and waited for the party to file. The Democratic Party showed up about 4:20 and filed.. the Kuchinich representaive showed up about 4:25.. The Richardson campaign offically filed at 4:38 after the Deomcratic Party was done filing. Followed by the Kucinich campaign and then the Biden campaign, who was coming in as we were leaving and filed at 4:55, and BTW was there until after 5pm so if the Dodd campagin tried to get there just after 5PM they would have been seen.
So as for the comments the Dodd campaign delievered the petitions and the State Board lost them.. all the campaigns both republican and democrat were in and out of State Board of Election throughout the day.. and it's a small entrance where the receptionist is.. I can not believe anyone would just "drop off" something as important as this.. I think they would want to be sure to hand it over to someone and if they did they would have gotten logged in and given a reciept.
I am also pretty sure they didn't have over 10,000 on thier own like the Obama, Edwards or Clinton campaigns did.
So they would have had to file AFTER The party filed and as mentioned from the time the party filed until 5PM no one from thier campaign was there. So, I do not think the Dodd campaign was being completely honest and should at minimum apologize to the State Board of Elections.
Charles
Disheartening really. I know some of our group actually made an effort for Gravel as well. It was so cold so early that its hard to get people to stand out at metro stops in this weather and get signatures. I wish that they didn't rush the process. Most people weren't even thinking about who they wanted to vote for yet.