Liberty Maven

Today the Bob Barr campaign will turn in signatures in an effort to get Bob Barr on the ballot in West Virginia. If there are enough signatures, then Bob Barr will likely be on the ballot in 49 states (all except Oklahoma). From Barr’s blog:

Organizers and volunteers for Bob Barr 2008 will begin turning in petitions today at 1:30pm in West Virginia at the Secretary of State’s office in Charleston. A press conference will be held at 2pm with Mike Ferguson, Barr ’08 Midwest Coordinator and director of the ballot access drive in West Virginia, and Andrew Davis, national spokesperson for the Libertarian Party.

It will take sometime for the Secretary of State’s office to review the petitions to determine if we have enough signatures.

In a news report yesterday from West Virginia WSAZ says that Barr supporters claim enough signatures were collected.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) – Organizers for the Bob Barr campaign for president plan to turn in petitions to the West Virginia Secretary of State Friday. The signatures are expected to surpass the 15,000 needed to gain ballot access in West Virginia.

Organizers have been collecting signatures for the past couple weeks to get the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate on the ballot.

The group will hold a media briefing immediately after turning in the required signatures by the deadline tomorrow at the state capitol.

However, there’s a conflicting story on independentpoliticalreporter.com claiming the opposite, that not enough signatures were collected:

According to a field report by one of the Libertarian petitioners on the ground in West Virginia, as of tonight’s final turn-in of signatures by petitioners to the campaign, the LP gathered only around 12,000 raw signatures, falling short of the 15,118 required by state law. While additional signatures would be required to survive a challenge, the bare minimum required by law would have been enough if there was no challenge.

Hopefully the first report is the accurate one.