THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 7, 1996 TAG: 9606070481
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE HUDSON, LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
LENGTH: 51 lines
A federal judge has ruled that Virginia's ballot-access laws are unconstitutional because the filing deadline they set for independents who want to get on the U.S. Senate ballot is too early.
Independent Senate candidates must turn in petitions signed by about 15,000 registered voters to get on the ballot.
Virginia law says these petitions must be turned in six months before the November election - Tuesday, June 11, this year. But U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser ordered the state to extend its deadline to no more than 90 days before the election.
George ``Tex'' Wood, a would-be independent candidate for the Senate, had sued the state over the deadlines. He contends the Republican and Democratic parties work together to lock out independents and third-party candidates.
Critics of the two major parties say the ruling could help put more outsider candidates on the ballot in Virginia.
The state is appealing the ruling.
Wood argued that the filing deadlines made it impossible for truly independent candidates to get the required signatures. Republican J. Marshall Coleman and Democrat L. Douglas Wilder were able to win ballot access as independents in the 1994 Senate race, but Wood contends that was because they were major-party insiders who could bankroll private companies to collect voter signatures. (Wilder later dropped out of the race.)
The state's lawyers denied the deadline was designed to lock out independents.
They argued that the early deadline was needed to give the Board of Elections time to verify the petition signatures - to make sure signers were registered voters - and then to print the ballots. Changing it, they said, would make it difficult, if not impossible, to produce the ballots in time.
Wood countered that most other states have shorter deadlines - and Virginia's deadline for independent and third-party presidential candidates is already just 74 days before the election.
Whether Wood's victory will survive on appeal is unclear. On Monday, a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals panel voted 2-1 to uphold West Virginia's May filing deadline for independent and third-party candidates.
Wood said a new deadline would give him a chance at getting enough signatures.
He may not need them, however. On Saturday, he hopes to win the nomination of the Virginia Independent Party. The VIP has an automatic ballot slot because Coleman, its 1994 Senate candidate, drew more than 10 percent of the vote.
KEYWORDS: RULING by CNB