Rick Santorum's organizational problems are deepening, and they could cost him a substantial chunk of delegates in Tuesday's 10 Republican presidential nominating contests and in several contests to come.
Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, failed to qualify for the ballot in Virginia, so he won't be eligible for any of the state's 49 delegates in Tuesday's primary.
[Read: All Signs Point to Romney on Super Tuesday]
He also failed to qualify for delegates in several Ohio districts, meaning that he will be ineligible to receive up to 18 of the 66 delegates at stake in Ohio, no matter how well he does in the popular vote.
And he failed to complete his slate of delegates in Tennessee, although the number of delegates he could lose remains unclear because the rules are so complex.
It gets worse. It turns out that Santorum could lose 10 delegates of the 69 at stake in Illinois on March 20 because his campaign didn't follow the rules. His campaign also has failed to qualify for 16 of 19 delegate slots in the District of Columbia primary on April 3.
All this reflects the weakness of Santorum's national organization, which will be a continuing problem as the campaign moves on and which could be debilitating for Santorum if the nomination race gets close.
Supporters of GOP front-runner Mitt Romney jumped on the issue. "The basic organizational test that you're going to have to have to battle President Obama is a test that Rick Santorum and his campaign have flunked," Ben Ginsburg, chief legal counsel for Romney's campaign, told the Boston Globe.
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