Political Campaigning and Election Petitions

All of your political campaign petitions have to be filled out by a certain date before voters cast their ballots in the election, which may be weeks or even months before the actual election day. Check your local filing date deadline. Late petitions are not accepted in any state.

After you get your political campaign petitions out to the circulators, you have to get them back on time. On time means, with enough time before the filing deadline for you to go over them carefully. You should check your own petitions with the same nitpicking zeal that the elections office will use.

If you find a mistake, it can be corrected. If they find a mistake, you are out and the voters will not have a chance to cast their ballot for you.

When you start getting your petitions back, you may find you have more than enough voter names on the petition. However, you may find that you have only near the minimum number, or that there is a problem with one of your campaign petitions.

If one of your petitions is invalidated, you may not get on the ballot. It is better to throw out the problem petition and get more names on a new one, which you know is done correctly. In order to be able to do this, of course, means that you have to plan to get the petitions out, signed and back and still leave yourself time enough to check and get even more names if you happen to need them.

Not everyone can sign a petition to get a candidate on the ballot for a reelection campaign. Generally, the signer must be a registered voter, and usually must be of the same political party as the candidate, and only Independents can sign Independent candidates' petitions.

In some states, however, anybody can sign regardless of party affiliation. The signer almost always has to be a resident of that voting district, i.e., live in the same ward, town, county, etc., that the candidate is running in.

Illegible signatures are often not counted for the reelection campaign, not because of any nefarious politicking, but simply because the signature cannot be read. Ask the signers to write clearly.

There is no end to the things that can invalidate a signature or petition, so the best thing is to get more names on the reelection campaign petition than you actually need. The general rule of thumb is three to one. If you need one hundred valid names, file petitions containing three hundred names. But even that can get you into trouble, because most states have a maximum number of names that a candidate can submit.

The validators at the Board of Elections do not have the time to search through a petition with one hundred signatures to just find one or two valid names, so limiting the names or part petitions to be filed makes sense.

This too is a reasonable restriction that is subverted when carried to extremes. You would think that if a candidate filed more than the maximum, they could just look at the maximum number and not look at the extra names. Instead, they invalidate the entire petition, so the rule of thumb of 3 to 1 becomes 2.9 to 1, to avoid that trap.