Perot Supporters Make Progress in Ballot Drive

Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot’s two-month-old nationwide grass-roots movement has made significant progress toward meeting his goal of collecting the 732,000 signatures needed to be placed on the general election ballot in all 50 states.

As a sign of his confidence, he recently leased 50,000 square feet of Dallas office space that can accommodate more than 200 workers to help put the petition drive over the top.

Perot is officially on the ballot in only one state, Tennessee. However, volunteers have unofficially satisfied the signature requirement in at least two states, Alaska (2,002 signatures) and Alabama (5,000 signatures).

Petitions have not yet been circulated in California, where state coordinator Bob Hayden said thousands of volunteers are gearing up to collect the required 135,000 signatures between April 24 and Aug. 7.

“We got 20,000 people expressing interest in a five-week period,” said Hayden. “The signature-gathering process should be fairly easy.”

In about 10 states, organizers await such state-mandated periods for candidacy petition drives that begin as late as August. About half of the states require signatures of 1% to 3% of the state’s registered voters, while the other half have simply set a fixed number of required signatures, ranging from 200 (Washington State) to 10,000 (Massachusetts).

Ballot access is perhaps easiest in Arkansas, which requires only a public meeting at which supporters put their candidate on the ballot. Louisiana requires only a $500 filing fee.

But Perot faces minefields elsewhere. Perot’s home state of Texas puts up formidable barriers--including signature restrictions limiting petition signers to the ranks of registered voters who did not vote in the primary, and the earliest filing deadline in the nation, May 11. Perot’s Dallas headquarters will not release the number of signatures collected here until the minimum 54,275 names have been certified by the state.

Perot’s toughest challenge may be in New York. Published reports last week had the New York GOP and Bush advisers hoping to bury Perot’s campaign in the red tape of the New York election code. “There is no doubt they will use every legal quirk in the law to keep Ross Perot off the ballot,” said John Zaubler, field director of Perot’s Manhattan campaign office.

Anyone intent on stopping Perot could challenge the signatures in court. One name improperly witnessed will invalidate an entire sheet of signatures. Zaubler said at least 100,000 signatures will have to be collected to ensure that the minimum 20,000 names are ultimately certified.

Richard Winger, who publishes a ballot access newsletter in San Francisco, said Perot may have to challenge laws in Hawaii and Illinois that prohibit substituting one running mate for another. Perot’s current running mate--James Stockdale, a former Navy vice admiral and Vietnam POW--is filling the spot temporarily while the search for a vice presidential candidate continues.

Elsewhere in the nation:

* In Wisconsin, where 4,000 volunteers stand ready to hit the streets and malls on Aug. 1, collecting the 2,000 necessary signatures seems almost moot. “The volunteers alone fulfill the signature requirement, so we’re looking at the petition drive as a drill for the November campaign,” said state coordinator Cindy Schultz.

* In Florida, 25,000 of the required 60,312 signatures have already been collected in a drive that began April 10. “We expect to get the rest within a week,” said volunteer Gary Crowther.