We are seeing an attempt to curtail some voter rights in the United States. This issue has been very well publicised. What is not so well known is the ease with which the Virginia Electoral Board can keep Independent and third party candidates off of the ballot.
     We started our campaign in January of 2021. It was very slow going due the pandemic. Every ballot petition signature that we gathered was tough to get. Fear of Covid-19, kept a lot of volunteers home, people wary of contact with door knockers and the Independents running for the Virginia House did not have electronic ballot petiton signature gathering available to them. We persisted and gathered around 200 signatures, the process of verification by the Chesapeake Voter Registrar found that we had enough signatures to be placed on the ballot on June 8th, 2021.
      Part 2 of getting on the ballot involves the filing the necessary paperwork with the Board of Elections. At the direction of the Chesapeake Registrar, the Statement of Economic Interest forms were filed with their office on June 2, 2021, well ahead of the June 8th deadline. There are emails that have been provided to the Board, that document this. It turns out, the forms should have gone to the Richmond, Va. office instead.
      We were told by the Chesapeake Registrar on June 8th, 2021 that we were "good to go." A few days later we got a call from a reporter asking if we knew that we had not made the ballot. Of course, we did not. We petitioned the Board of Electionsfor a continuance to get the needed forms to them. They declined to even hear the motion of our campaign or any of the other Independent Candidates. They did however, grant exemptions to many of the Republican and Democrat extension seekers. 
For more information, please follow this link to a Virginia Mercury article about this travesty.  https://www.virginiamercury.com/2021/07/12/va-house-candidate-blocked-from-ballot-after-election-officials-mistake/
       We are asking the Board to hear our case again. We believe that voter suppression also happens when the people who signed our ballot petitions are denied the choice that they have asked for.
        We are kindly asking you, registered Virginia voters, to sign and share our petition. Let Democracy thrive by adding our Independent voices in the coming November 2, 2021 election. Please help Jeff Staples get on the ballot!