Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry Fail to Qualify for Virginia Ballot

After a scramble to gather the requisite number of signatures in his homestate, Newt Gingrich failed to make it on the ballot in the state of Virginia.

Texas Governor Rick Perry also failed submit enough signatures to make the Virginia ballot. Perry's spokesman Ray Sullivan released a statement indicating that his campaign plans to carefully review Virginia state law in order to assess if there is an option to challenge the parties decision.

"We will closely review the facts and law to determine whether an appeal or challenge is warranted" the statement reads.

The deadline for gathering the signatures to qualify for the Virginia ballot was Thursday at 5pm.

State rules require that a candidate submit 10,000 signatures of registered Virginia voters, including at least 400 from each of the state's 11 Congressional districts.

Gingrich's campaign was trying to meet that deadline - even bringing the candidate back to Virginia Wednesday for signature-gathering events, even as Mitt Romney was boasting that he had cleared the Virginia bar early.

Since Thursday, the state's Republican party has been verifying the signatures and tweeting the results.

Early this morning, results for Gingrich came in and they were not good:

Republican party tweets @VA_GOP: after verification, RPV has determined that Newt Gingrich did not submit required 10k signatures and has not qualified for the VA primary.

The Gingrich campaign released a statement on Saturday morning announcing their plans to work with the commonwealth's Republican party to pursue an "aggressive" write-in campaign for the state primary.

"Voters deserve the right to vote for any top contender," reads the statement put forth by Gingrich campaign director Michael Krull. "We will work with the Republican Party of Virginia to pursue an aggressive write-in campaign to make sure that all of the voters of Virginia are able to vote for the candidate of their choice."

Out of the seven leading GOP candidates only two - Ron Paul and Mitt Romney- have qualified to have their names appear on the ballot in Virginia's March 6 primary.