10th District Republican Committee Approves the Call for a Firehouse Primary

Tonight, Virginia’s 10th District Republican Committee approved the call for a Firehouse Primary to be held on April 26th, 2014.   The candidates’ filing deadline will be 5:00 pm on March 1, 2014.  The non-refundable fee will be $6,960.   Starting as early as tomorrow, the official candidate form can be downloaded at rpv.org.

There will be ten polling places, with 2 in Fairfax including one at Langley High School, Barbara Comstock’s neighborhood school, and one at Centreville High School in Clifton.  Loudoun will have 3 polling places: Harmony Middle School in Hamilton; Stonebridge High School in Ashburn; and Freedom High School in Chantilly.

In Clarke County voters will cast their ballots at Berryville Primary School, and in Frederick County at Millbrook High School.  For Winchester City, voters will vote at the War Memorial building.   Those in Prince William County will vote at Battlefield High School while those in the city of Manassas and Manassas Park will vote at Grace E. Metz Middle School.

Balloting will be between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm in all voting locations.  If a voter is in line to vote by 3:00 pm he will be allowed to vote.  There will be no absentee voting, proxies, or provisional ballots.  No write-in candidates will be permitted.  Any ballot with more than one candidate chosen, or a write-in candidate, will be declared invalid.   Any registered voter may vote, after presenting a photo ID and signing a statement indicating intent to support the Republican nominee in November.  A voter will be ineligible to vote if he or she has participated in the process of nomination of a candidate for the another party within the last 5 years.  An exemption can be made if a voter signs that he or she intends to support the Republican nominees in the future.  The votes will not be weighted.  The candidate with the highest number of votes from all the polling stations combined will be the nominee.

The Committee also approved $50,000 to cover the costs of the Firehouse Primary.  Heidi Stirrup was the only committee member to vote against this large allocation of money.

The Official Call for the Party Canvas (Firehouse Primary) can be found here. 

Contrast the 10th District Republican’s open voting process with the 10th District Democrat’s chosen method for nominating their candidate.  Democrats will have a very exclusive convention, also to be held on April 26th.  Only 300 democrat delegates, with 60 alternates, will be permitted to cast a ballot to choose their Congressional nominee.  Their candidates’ filing fee is set at $5,000 and each candidate must have 1,000 voter signatures to file.  Their deadline is March 11, 2014.  Details of the Democrats’ rather convoluted and exclusive convention process here.