ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 6, 1996 TAG: 9604080035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: Associated Press
Ross Perot's Reform Party of Virginia will join with the recently certified Virginia Independent Party to get the Reform Party's presidential candidate on the state ballot this fall.
Louis Herrink of King George, chairman of the Independent Party, and Don Mott, field representative for the Perot Reform Committee, wrote a joint letter this week to potential supporters.
``Our objectives are to nominate and elect a president who shares our vision for America and to form a new competitive political party as an alternative to the existing major parties,'' the letter said.
Herrink and Mott said the Virginia Independent Party has agreed to be represented on the 1996 ballot by the nominees of the Reform Party.
The Reform Party is an offshoot of Perot's United We Stand organization. United We Stand cannot field or endorse candidates because it is a nonpartisan, citizen action-education group.
Perot, a Texas billionaire, got his name on the ballot in all of the states in 1992. He received 19 percent of the vote nationwide and almost 14 percent in Virginia.
By joining forces with the Virginia Independent Party, the Reform Party does not have to secure the thousands of voter signatures necessary to get on the ballot because the Independent Party already is a legal party in Virginia.
The State Board of Elections in February said the Virginia Independent Party qualified for a ballot listing because it had received at least 10 percent of the total vote cast for a statewide office at one of the two preceding state general elections.
Marshall Coleman, running as an independent, received 11.4 percent of the vote in Virginia's 1994 U.S. Senate election. Coleman said he regarded himself as the candidate of the Virginia Independent Party.
LENGTH: Short : 45 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESIDENTby CNB