This afternoon, the Secretary of State deemed the signatures submitted by U.S. Senate candidate Jon Keyser insufficient to make the June primary ballot. According to the press release, Keyser submitted 16,067 signatures of which 11,436 were deemed valid. However, the catch is that anyone petitioning on in the U.S. Senate race had to get 1,500 valid signatures from each of the seven congressional districts. According to the Secretary of State, Team Keyser was short just 86 in Congressional District 3, which is basically the Western half of the state, minus the Denver metro area.
Team Keyser plans to legally challenge the signatures, and issued the following statement:
“We are confident that we secured the necessary number of signatures to appear on the ballot and we will be pursuing legal action to ensure thousands of Coloradans are not disenfranchised,” said Matt Connelly, Communications Director, Jon Keyser for Senate.
Keyser is one of four candidates attempting to get on the ballot via petition. Jack Graham was the first to submit his signatures and has already been cleared for take off. Robert Blaha and Ryan Frazier turned theirs in third and fourth, respectively. The challenge with petitioning on is that all submitted signatures can only count for one candidate. So, the first to submit could invalidate some of the signatures for candidates who submit after him or her. In short, the later candidates are in submitting signatures, the harder to get on the ballot. That may be the case here.
All we know is that Team Keyser is mounting a legal challenge and they have plenty to work with. In fact, just a few years ago businessman Eric Weissmann petitioned on the ballot to run as a Republican in the Second Congressional District. He submitted 1,456 signatures, but 600 or so were deemed invalid due to clerical errors. He challenged the ruling in court and won. This story isn’t over yet. We’ll keep you posted, PeakNation™.