Georgia has the most restrictive ballot access laws in the country.”	true	/georgia/statements/2010/jul/02/mary-n/norwood-says-georgia-has-most-restrictive-ballot-a/	Mary Norwood often said during last year’s unsuccessful run for Atlanta mayor that she was not red or blue, but purple. In other words, Norwood claimed she was not a strict disciple of either the Democratic or the Republican parties. So when Norwood jumped into the race earlier this year for Fulton County Commission chairman, she decided to run as an independent. So far, her toughest battle is not with the incumbent, John Eaves, but getting on the Nov. 2 ballot. “Georgia has the most restrictive ballot access laws in the country,” Norwood, a former two-term Atlanta city councilwoman, said during a television interview Tuesday evening. That claim was too juicy for PolitiFact Georgia to resist checking out. We began by asking the Norwood camp for details. Anne Fauver, her campaign manager, explained. Georgia requires independent candidates running for countywide offices to get at least 5 percent of all registered voters eligible to vote in the last election in that jurisdiction to sign a petition supporting their placement on the ballot. “I didn’t know how restrictive it was in comparison to other states,” said Fauver, who served with Norwood on the City Council. Norwood needs about 22,700 signatures to get on the ballot. Thus far, she is “more than halfway” to her goal, Fauver said. Norwood has until July 13 to reach the magic number. Norwood has taken Eaves to court over what she calls a “hypertechnical interpretation” of the law to discount about 3,000 of the signatures she has collected. The Eaves campaign says each petition signer must write “Fulton,” along with their address, on the form. Norwood says Fulton election officials told her she could pre-type “Fulton” on the form. A judge dismissed Norwood’s complaint on this point Thursday, saying, in part, that any ruling before the deadline “would constitute an advisory opinion.” As for the 5 percent rule, we reached out to Richard Winger, the California-based editor of Ballot Access News. He has studied ballot issues for more than four decades. Winger was called a “savant” on the topic by Columbia University professor Nate Persily and “the nation’s encyclopedia on this stuff” by Capital University Law School professor Bradley Smith. “That is the toughest such law in the country,” Winger said of Georgia. Until 1943, any political party could gain across-the-board ballot access by registering a slate of officers with the secretary of state. State leaders changed the system that year, primarily to discourage Communist Party candidates from getting on the ballot, Winger said. Some Southern states also used such rules to ensure that a white candidate would win, Smith said. The laws gradually changed over the years for some offices, Winger said. Statewide independent candidates now need the signatures of 1 percent of registered voters to get on the ballot. The rules stayed the same for independent candidates seeking a municipal or countywide office, or seats in Congress or the Georgia Legislature. Why hasn’t the law changed? For some reason, Winger said, state lawmakers couldn’t agree in the 1980s on several proposed bills that would have made it easier for people to get on the ballot to potentially run against them. A bill that would have removed the requirement that independent candidates gather signatures on a petition to run for office did not pass earlier this year. Winger ranks North Carolina as having the second-most-restrictive ballot access guidelines for independent countywide candidates. The Tar Heel State requires those candidates to get the signatures of 4 percent of registered voters in the county to get on the ballot. Winger ranked Illinois as third, but it’s worth noting that state also requires independent countywide candidates to get 5 percent of the signatures of voters who cast ballots in the 2008 election. As for her claim on Georgia’s rules about ballot access, the Peach State and Illinois both have similar ballot access guidelines. Therefore, we rate Norwood’s statement as True.	None	Mary Norwood	None	None	None	2010-07-02T06:00:00	2010-06-29	['None']
vees-00023	The Youtube channel BITAG OFFICIAL uploaded Oct. 12 a 9-minute clip of Tulfo’s BITAG Live episode that day with the title, “UN chief, pabor sa Drug War ni PDu30! CHR, sampal sa inyo (UN chief, in favor of PDu30’s drug war! CHR, this is a slap to your face)!”	misleading	http://verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-ben-tulfos-report-claiming-un-chief-fa	Both the title of the clip and Tulfo’s report are misleading.	None	None	None	United Nations,war on drugs,Benjamin Tulfo,António Guterres	VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Ben Tulfo’s report claiming UN chief ‘in favor of Duterte’s drug war’ MISLEADING	October 18, 2018	None	['None']
pomt-02757	Says Rep. Steve Stockman basically wants gun-filled zones in schools."
Texas politics took an unexpected turn when Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman filed just before the deadline to run against incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn. Assessing the matchup of two conservative candidates, Huffington Post columnist Howard Fineman said Stockman’s world is all about guns. "This is a guy who not only doesn't want gun-free zones around schools. He basically wants gun-filled zones in schools," Fineman said on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes. We decided to check Fineman’s assertion. At the start of this year, a few weeks after the Newtown, Conn., shootings, Stockman introduced the Safe Schools Act of 2013. The bill was very simple. It would repeal a federal law that bans everyone except law enforcement from bringing a weapon inside a school. The bill’s stated purpose was "to restore safety to America's schools by allowing staff, teachers, and administrators to defend the children and themselves." There is no question that Stockman envisioned more people with firearms at schools. "Stockman clearly likes that scenario," said David Kopel, an associate policy analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute and a proponent of Second Amendment rights. Where Kopel differs with Fineman’s rhetorical flourish is on the point of whether the schools would be full of guns. "When I think of a gun-filled zone, I think of a gun show or going to the annual meeting of the NRA (National Rifle Association) where you know that you are never more than 50 feet from someone with a conceal carry permit and a gun," Kopel said. So, Kopel says Fineman engaged in a bit of exaggeration. The other supporters of gun rights we reached said the whole point of Stockman’s bill was to give principals, teachers and staff the ability to defend themselves and their students. We asked Stockman’s office for evidence that more guns would yield more security and did not hear back. But Kopel and Erich Pratt, director of communications for Gun Owners of America, both pointed to the example in Pearl, Miss., where a student opened fire in 1997. An assistant principal ran out to his car where he kept a gun and successfully apprehended the shooter. Pratt also said a Centers for Disease Control study found that the number of times a gun was used defensively was much greater than the number of times a gun was used to kill someone. The actual words from the report, which was a survey of past research, were a bit more nuanced. The authors noted that there was much debate about the data and said "defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals." The report added that gun-using crime victims have lower injury rates than victims who use other defensive strategies, however it noted that we don’t know if that protective benefit outweighs the deaths and injuries associated with gun ownership in general. The gun debate is fueled by conflicting values and studies. David Hemenway, professor of health policy at Harvard School of Public Health, said he knows of no report that shows that armed civilians provide a protective factor. In his view, the evidence speaks to quite the opposite conclusion. "Studies do show that where there are more households with guns, all other things equal, there is more homicide because there is more gun homicide," Hemenway said. Our experts could not point to research on whether armed school personnel would afford the students greater safety, largely because most states don’t allow guns inside schools and episodes of gunmen opening fire in schools are rare. "It’s hard for social science to do studies of such low frequency events," Kopel said. Our ruling Fineman said that Stockman "basically wants gun-filled schools." Stockman did introduce a bill that would make it easier for states to allow school personnel to carry firearms. The bill’s stated purpose was to allow those people to defend themselves and their students from an armed intruder. Our experts agreed that Stockman’s goal was to see more firearms inside schools. We did not hear from Stockman’s office so there is no way to know if he envisioned an upper limit to that increase. Based on his bill itself, there would be none. We rate the claim True.
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