Obama Easily Got Signatures to Get on Virginia Ballot, Hillary Had To Pay

(h/t Politico)

The Connection reports:

One of the hardest states in which to get on the presidential ballot is Virginia. Potential candidates must collect the signatures of 10,000 registered Virginia voters from across the state with at least 400 signatures coming from each of its 11 Congressional districts.

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The campaigns of Barack Obama and Ron Paul collected their required signatures with remarkable ease and were able to turn them in weeks before the deadline, which was last week. But the Hillary Clinton campaign struggled to complete the ballot requirements in Virginia and was forced to spend valuable resources to ensure her name would be on the ballot.

“The grassroots network for Obama is intense,” Kevin Wolf, an Obama volunteer who was responsible for the campaign’s signature collection effort in Virginia, said.

He said that the Obama campaign collected almost 20,000 signatures, double the required amount, and was able to do it weeks before the deadline.

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Kevin Vincent, Obama’s Northern Virginia coordinator, said that the signature gathering effort did not use any paid staff. “It was a matter of volunteers working hard,” he said.

THE CLINTON campaign had more difficulty. Despite being considered the presumptive front-runner for the Democratic nomination, the former First Lady’s campaign was struggling in the final days before the deadline to gather all the signatures.

One method the Clinton campaign used to accomplished this was to use paid signature gatherers…The Clinton campaign, which did not respond to requests for comment on this story, was even offering to pay gatherers – legal as long as the signers don’t see any of the money – at a flat rate of $2.10 per signature.

Edwards was able to get on the Virginia ballot but had to turn their signatures in to the State Board of Elections shortly before the deadline.

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