Playing the game by the rules

This week, it’s South Carolina’s turn. Republican presidential candidates are in the Palmetto State campaigning for votes in Saturday’s primary.

Mitt Romney continues to lead the pack, but some pundits believe that at least one of Romney’s more conservative challengers must win in South Carolina — and 10 days later in Florida — to have a chance this year.

That’s where the Republican presidential race stands right now. By the time the race gets to Virginia for the March 6 Super Tuesday primary, though, it looks increasingly certain that there will be just two candidates on the ballot: Romney and Ron Paul.

Last week, a federal judge ruled against four Republican presidential candidates — Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman — seeking to get their names on Virginia’s Super Tuesday ballot.

"In essence, they played the game, they lost, then they complained about the rules," U.S. District Judge John A. Gibney told The Associated Press.

The rules of the game are vastly different from state to state, and the presidential field is constantly shifting. Since Gibney’s ruling, Huntsman has dropped out of the race. By the end of this week, either Perry, Santorum or Gingrich might wind up doing the same thing.

To get on Virginia’s Republican primary ballot, a candidate needed the signatures of 10,000 registered Virginia voters — including at least 400 in each of the state’s 11 congressional districts — and those signatures had to be collected by registered Virginia voters.

There are two issues here.

One is the unique nature of presidential campaigns, which are expensive, long and complicated.

Some candidates barely have enough money to operate until a strong poll, caucus or primary result — or stumbles by other candidates— brings in enough money to build the kind of organization they need to do things like get their names on the ballot all over the country.

Taken in that light, Virginia is asking a lot of presidential primary candidates, especially those who struggle to raise the money needed to build a national organization.

But the other, much more important issue is that elections, like so many other things in life, have rules that must be followed.

No one gave the Romney and Paul campaigns the kind of break that Perry, Gingrich, Santorum and Huntsman wanted.

There is a place (the Virginia General Assembly) and a time (during the annual session) to change election rules — or state laws we don’t agree with.

While it’s true that Perry, Gingrich, Santorum and Huntsman won’t have much interest in Virginia’s ballot access law after March 6, it’s equally true that if we were to change the rules after the game started that would be unfair to Romney, Paul and the voters who will take part in this year’s Republican Party presidential primary.