Rick Santorum denounced the “arcane” and “byzantine” state ballot access requirements that have prevented him from being on the ballot in key elections, as he called for Mitt Romney to support his efforts to have his name on the ballots.
“I think we should have ballot requirements [that] let the candidates on if you’re a legitimate candidate for president,” Santorum said on Fox and Friends today. “They shouldn’t have these byzantine ballot requirements that — as we saw particularly in Virginia — that keep legitimate candidates off the ballot.”
Santorum has struggled to file delegates and obtain signatures to make the ballot in certain congressional districts — and even statewide, most notably in Virginia — at least in part, he says, because he was still a little-known candidate running in Iowa when the deadline for meeting ballot access requirements in many places passed.
Romney beat Ron Paul in a one-on-one matchup in the Virginia primary after every other candidate failed to meet the state’s famously difficult requirements for presidential candidates getting on the ballot.
“I’m not the person in this race who’s going out there trying to disqualify ballots,” he added, in an apparent allusion to the Romney campaign’s attempt to have him removed from the Illinois ballot. Romney’s challenge prompted Santorum’s campaign to request that Romney also be removed from the ballot on similar grounds. “I believe that Governor Romney should be on every ballot and I would hope that he and all the other candidates would try to encourage that we would and all the other candidates get on the ballot.”
The campaigns agreed to withdraw their complaints against each other, so that Illinois voters tomorrow can choose to vote for either one.
Santorum will only be on the ballot in 10 of Illinois’ 14 congressional districts tomorrow.
