A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that three remaining Republican presidential candidates would be excluded from Virginia’s primary ballot and scolded four campaigns for attempting to “upend” the election process at the “eleventh hour.”
With the ruling, the court rejected a lawsuit brought by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Sen. Rick Santorum, all of whom failed to collect the 10,000 voter signatures needed to get on the ballot.
The U.S. Fourth District Appeals Court ruling means only two candidates — former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas — will appear on the Virginia ballot.
The three-judge panel sided with District Court Judge John Gibney, who concluded Friday that he could not issue an emergency injunction to alter the ballot because the candidates waited too long to complain about the tough ballot-access regulations.
Candidates knew of the ballot rules for months and could have begun collecting signatures July 1, the court noted. But Perry, who handed in just 6,000 signatures by the Dec. 22 deadline, didn’t sue until after the state GOP ruled that he didn’t qualify for the March 6 primary. Gingrich and Santorum later joined the lawsuit. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman also joined the suit, but has since dropped out of the race.
The court refused to speculate whether the campaigns would have met the 10,000-signature threshold if people from out of state were allowed to collect signatures. Gibney said that part of the Virginia law may be unconstitutional.
Perry, Gingrich and Santorum “had every opportunity to challenge the various Virginia ballot restrictions at a time when the challenge would have not created the disruption this last-minute lawsuit has,” the judges wrote.
Federal law requires localities to send absentee ballots to overseas military personnel and disabled voters by Saturday.
Perry lawyer Joe Nixon said in a statement the campaign was “weighing options for appeal.”
