Gosh, this story brings back the good old days for me. Back when I was working on a few election campaigns for liberal Democratic candidates, one of my responsibilities was ensuring that candidate petitions were being properly circulated and completed. Reasons for disqualification of a voter signature on a petition were many and varied, including a few referenced in the Conyer's story. I always enjoyed when my candidate was running against some earnest but hapless Republican newbie, who usually employed inexperienced volunteers to circulate petitions.

After the petition submission deadline had passed, I would saunter down to the voter registration office with an attorney/political hack/candidate designee and request to see the petitions of the opposing candidate. While a few signatures were invariably disqualified because individuals were registered to the wrong political party, or their registration had lapsed because of failure to vote in multiple consecutive elections, I would usually have a field day reviewing the address section. I lived in a city of a name which was often abbreviated in common use (e.g., Los Angeles is often referred to as "L.A.") and when the voter used the city abbreviation instead of writing the full city name, his signature was automatically invalidated under state law. Another reason for disqualification involved the format of the petition, where voters would write the name and address on one line of the petition, with the provision for the next voter's information located on a line directly below. While circulating a petition through the neighborhood, some lazy petition signators couldn't even be bothered to write the abbreviated version of the city portion of the address, instead, they placed ditto marks ( " ) below the address of the previous signator. I recall one petition where the ditto marks were used over fifty times in a row. Ouch.

I distinctly recall having a front-row seat to the disqualification of four Republican candidates for office due to the stupidity of their campaign staff in such matters. So sad. Perhaps they would have done some good for their community.