Perot Party Fails to Make Ohio Ballot

Ross Perot’s independent third-party movement was dealt a setback Tuesday as Ohio election officials ruled his Reform Party failed to muster enough petition signatures to qualify for the state’s 1996 presidential election ballot.

Needing 33,463 valid signatures to qualify for next year’s ballot and a spot in the state’s March 19 primary, Perot’s party fell more than 2,300 short, said Ohio Secretary of State Robert Taft. The Perot party handed in more than 54,000 signatures in November after a 25-day petition drive, but some 35% of the names were declared invalid, Ohio officials said, because they failed to meet state specifications.

“The biggest problem was invalid or illegible signatures,” said Shelly Hoffman, a Taft aide.

Leaders of Perot’s drive to win ballot slots in all 50 states said that their national candidates can still qualify for the Ohio ballot under a separate petition drive ending next August--or if they run as independents. The group also plans to audit nearly 20,000 nullified signatures.

“We’re keeping right on track,” said Russell Verney, the Reform Party’s national coordinator. Though he praised state officials for cooperating, Verney blamed stringent state laws and foot-dragging by local governments for many disqualified signatures.

“We know that creating a new political party is a threat to the establishment,” he said.

Verney cited one instance in which local officials turned down petitions because, they ruled, a Reform Party official was not registered to vote in Ohio. State elections officials later determined that the Perot worker was an Ohioan and validated the names.

Political observers said that such stringent application of election laws in other states will hamper Perot’s ballot campaign.

“There are real obstacles in getting on the ballot in some states,” said Emmett Buell, professor of political science at Ohio’s Denison University.

Perot’s party recently won permission to appear on the 1996 ballot in California. But in Florida, Perot backers must obtain valid signatures from 1% of the state’s registered voters by July 15. A similar threshold is required in Oklahoma, Buell said, and in Wyoming, supporters will need signatures from 3% of the voting population.

Buell said that in Ohio, Perot’s continuing tight control of the Reform Party and its reliance on volunteers from outside the state--a factor in the large number of signatures declared invalid--shows that the Texas industrialist’s party is “top-down and not grass-roots.”

Reform Party officials insisted that the Ohio setback will simply spur Perot supporters to work harder in overcoming obstacles elsewhere. “We’re prepared for the political parties to try just about everything from now until next November,” Verney said.