Yesterday was the petition filing deadline for the 2016 Pennsylvania Primary, and the Keystone Building's Hearing Room 1 had a steady flow of potential candidates, campaign volunteers and incumbents handing over petition signatures to Department of State employees. All the candidates must meet varying signature requirements to get on the ballot for their respective races. House candidates members have to get 300 signatures, Senate candidates need 500 signatures and it increases from there.
At three in the afternoon, Bernie Sanders' Field Director Andrea Putnam and volunteer Dwayne Heisler delivered the initial 2,000 petition signatures and shortly afterwards, Elijah LoPinto and his daughter Iris dropped off the remaining 16,000 supplemental signatures. The campaign's final petition count was 17,792.
By the time the Sanders campaign delivered their petitions, the Clinton, Cruz, Carson, Rubio and Bush campaigns had already filed. The Kasich and Trump campaigns filed close to the last minute. The Trump volunteers who handed in the petitions were kind enough to tell us that they handed at least 6,000 signatures. They seemed excited by those numbers considering that the Republican primary has a more crowded field.