Good question, Andrew.

Dave Talan reports that Rhode Island now has the second most onerous process for getting a candidate on the Presidential ballot. This is certainly undemocratic, it is probably litigious but most of all, it is puzzling.

The General Assembly (Democrat-controlled) establishes campaign law and election procedures, including ballot access. That same General Assembly was quite anxious to move up the date of Rhode Island's Presidential primary "for influence, attention and personal face-time by each of the major league presidential candidates". But doesn't the absence of some of the candidates on the ballot work in the opposite direction?

Hi!
He should be called "Mr.Signature" but the real hero in this GOP Presidential Candidate Access in Rhode Island; is Dave Talan. I even saw him in Hopkinton Tuesday doing this. Dave has been a great coordinator of this effort through the years. I like past years collected signatures for various candidates on the GOP side for President.New Hampshire has a filing fee of $1,000 per candidate.Each state rules are different.
Interestingly Raymond Stebbins filed in Rhode Island as a Democrat for President and in New Hampshire as a Democrat for Vice President. Kenneth Capalbo of Wakefield,South Kingstown is running as a Democrat in the New Hampshire Presidential Primary.He was formerly a South Kingstown Republican.Capalbo did not file in Rhode Island.
Regards,
Scott

Andrew,

I'm not personally aware of anywhere else with such a convoluted and grossly inefficient two-step process as in Rhode Island, though one can always hope that someone is as bad as we are. Most states have real Secretary of State offices which are empowered to handle most of this kind of stuff in house.

As for "allowing machine politicians two shots at disqualifying their opponents?" this isn't so much the case, as practically speaking, you don't get an opportunity to challenge what is first turned into the local boards of canvassers, before they submit the certified nomination papers off to the Secretary of State's office for certification / qualification. As soon as a canvassers finish checking to see if signers on a sheet are listed as current voters in that town, they "certify" the nomination papers, and send them off to the S of S for Round 2.

All the challenges, if there are any, are done through the Secretary of State's office (Elections Division), up until Jan. 10th. In cases where the numbers are very close to the 1000 mark, they could make a difference.

We will not know for sure which presidential candidates made the primary ballot until Jan. 10, but you can follow their progress on the Secretary of State's website. Candidates must have collected the signatures of at least 1,000 eligible Rhode Island voters in order to run in the state's March 4 presidential primary. The candidates had until Dec. 26 to submit the signatures to the board of canvassers of the city or town in which voters said they were registered. Municipalities have until Jan. 10 to validate the signatures. Those records then must be certified by the Secretary of State's office before the candidates are officially on R.I.'s presidential primary ballot. Rhode Islanders can track the progress of the 20 candidates who are vying for a spot on the ballot by visiting http://www.sec.state.ri.us/candidates/presidential/. The website site lists the number of validated signatures for each candidate as well as the number of signatures that have been certified toward the 1,000-signature threshold. The next milestone in the state’s presidential primary calendar is Feb. 1, when Secretary of State Mollis will hold a public lottery at the State House to determine the order in which the candidates will appear on the Democratic and Republican ballots.