On July 22, Mary Norwood, independent candidate for Chair of the Fulton County (Georgia) Commission, filed a lawsuit in state court in Atlanta.  The case is Norwood v Fulton  County Board of Registration and Elections, 2010-cv-188643.  A state law requires her to have paid her filing fee by noon on July 2, even though he petition was not due until July 13.  She did pay the fee on July 2, but at 4:40 p.m.  The lawsuit argues that substantial compliance should control this situation.

Meanwhile, county elections officials are checking her petition to see if she has the needed 22,500 (approximately) signatures.  She submitted approximately 33,000.

Georgia law has very few precedents on substantial compliance for independent candidate petitions.  The requirements are so difficult, it is rare for anyone to even try to get on the ballot as an independent candidate in Georgia.  No independent candidate petitions requiring as many as 22,000 valid signatures have succeeded in Georgia since Georgia first started requiring petitions for independent candidates in 1943, except for two independent presidential petitions, those of John Anderson in 1980 and Ross Perot in 1992.

Norwood had filed an earlier ballot access lawsuit on June 22, to validate her petition sheets in which the name “Fulton County” had been pre-printed on each signature line, so that the signer would not need to add this.  The judge in that case refused to rule either way, but later the Fulton County Election Board voted to accept those petition sheets.