WASHINGTON (AP) — Many of Mitt Romney’s presidential challengers are having trouble fulfilling a fundamental requirement of running for public office: getting on the ballot.

Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman have all failed to qualify for the ballot in at least one upcoming GOP primary. In other states, they have failed to file full slates of delegates with state or party officials, raising questions about whether these candidates have the resources to wage effective national campaigns.

And if one of them were able to marshal enough anti-Romney forces to challenge the front-runner, the ballot blunders could limit their ability to win delegates in key states.

The exception: Ron Paul, who appears to have avoided such pitfalls so far.

“This is why you need a real-life, no-kidding-around campaign,” said Rich Galen, a GOP strategist and former Gingrich aide who is neutral in the 2012 race. “All these guys who have been crowing that they found a new way to run for president, it’s like saying I’m inventing a new airplane, and it has only one wing.”

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, won the first two contests, in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he is leading in the polls in South Carolina and Florida, the next two states to have primaries. Romney raised $56 million in 2011 for his campaign, giving him big financial and organizational advantages over his GOP rivals.

Those advantages are on display as many of his competitors miss deadlines or fail to collect enough signatures to meet ballot requirements in upcoming contests.

Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who came within a few votes of winning the Iowa caucuses, failed to get on the ballot in Virginia or the District of Columbia. His campaign also filed incomplete slates of delegates in Illinois and Ohio, which could limit his ability to win delegates in those key states.

Virginia has been a tough ballot to crack for several GOP candidates because the state requires campaigns to collect signatures from at least 10,000 registered voters. Romney and Paul were the only ones who made the ballot for the March 6 primary. Perry sued, and he has since been joined in the lawsuit by Gingrich, Huntsman and Santorum.

Santorum is the only major candidate who will be left off the ballot in the District of Columbia primary April 3, said Paul Craney, executive director of the DC Republican Committee. The party provides two ways to get on the ballot: Pay $10,000, or pay $5,000 and collect signatures from 296 registered Republicans in the heavily Democratic capital city.

“It’s not easy, but it can be done, if you are a serious presidential candidate,” Craney said. “All the presidential candidates who are serious about winning the nomination will be on the D.C. ballot.”

Santorum adviser John Brabender acknowledged that Romney has more money and a larger campaign organization. But, he said, Santorum’s campaign has gained resources and momentum since the close finish in Iowa. Romney, he said, has been running for president for the past six years, giving him more time to build his organization.

“It’s a different campaign than it was earlier,” Brabender said.

Huntsman, the former Utah governor, failed to get on the ballot in Arizona or Illinois.

The requirements to get on the GOP ballot in Arizona are pretty easy — all you have to do is fill out a two-page form. Twenty-three candidates managed to do it properly, so they will be on the ballot for the state’s Feb. 28 primary.

Huntsman, however, was left off the ballot because his filing had a photocopied signature and wasn’t notarized, said Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett.

“If you can’t get on the ballot around the country, you’re a regional candidate, by definition,” said Rich Beeson, the Romney campaign’s political director. “Barack Obama is going to be on the ballot in all 50 states, and so will we.”

Gingrich, the former House speaker, didn’t make it on the ballot for primaries in Missouri or Virginia, though he has joined the lawsuit to get on the Virginia ballot and Missouri won’t award any delegates based on its Feb. 7 primary. Instead, Missouri Republicans will hold caucuses March 17.

Perry, the Texas governor, made the ballot in Illinois, but he will only be eligible to win one delegate in the state’s March 20 primary — a contest in which 54 delegates will be up for grabs.

It will take 1,144 delegates to win the nomination at the Republican national convention this summer.

Illinois has a unique way of awarding delegates to candidates. The winner of the state’s GOP primary doesn’t necessarily get any delegates. Instead, Republicans will vote for the actual delegates, who are listed separately on the ballot but are identified by the candidate they support.

Each of the state’s 18 congressional districts will elect three delegates, for a total of 54. To appear on the ballot as a delegate, candidates had to collect signatures from at least 600 registered voters in the district where they are running.

Only one Perry delegate filed signatures by the deadline, according to the Illinois State Board of Elections. Gingrich, Paul and Romney filed full slates, while only 44 Santorum delegates filed signatures.

The system is designed to keep fly-by-night candidates from crowding the ballot, said Christopher Mooney, a political science professor at the University of Illinois in Springfield.

“It keeps people who don’t know what they’re doing out of the arena,” Mooney said.

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Associated Press writers Paul Davenport in Phoenix and Ann Sanner in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.

ATLANTA (AP) — Those cute mail-order chicks that wind up in children’s Easter baskets and backyard farms have been linked to more than 300 cases of salmonella in the U.S. — mostly in youngsters — since 2004.

An estimated 50 million live poultry are sold through the mail each year in the United States in a business that has been booming because of the growing popularity of backyard chicken farming as a hobby among people who like the idea of raising their own food.

But health officials are warning of a bacterial threat on the birds’ feet, feathers, beaks and eggs.

NEW YORK (AP) — Leo Dillon, the groundbreaking illustrator who collaborated with his wife, Diane, on dozens of books for kids and adults and became the first African-American to win the Caldecott Medal for children’s books, has died. He was 79.

Dillon died May 26 at Long Island College Hospital from complications after lung surgery, publisher Scholastic Inc. announced Wednesday. Harlan Ellison, a close friend, wrote on his website that “Half my soul for 50 years went with him.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is moving to impose stiff new tariffs on wind-energy towers made in China, the latest strike in an escalating trade war over clean energy.

The Commerce Department said in a preliminary decision Wednesday that Chinese companies have received government subsidies on steel wind towers ranging from about 14 percent to 26 percent. The decision could result in tariffs of those amounts being imposed on about a dozen Chinese companies that export large numbers of steel wind towers to the United States.

It follows a Commerce Department decision this month to impose tariffs averaging about 31 percent on solar cells and panels imported from China.

China has called the U.S. action on solar equipment unfair and warned that higher tariffs could hurt efforts to promote clean energy.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration added new sanctions on a Syrian bank Wednesday as a top White House official said the U.S. wants to economically throttle the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and cut off salaries of pro-government thugs blamed for the grisly massacre in Houla.

The Treasury Department said the Syria International Islamic Bank has been acting as a front for other Syrian financial institutions seeking to circumvent sanctions. The new penalties will prohibit the SIIB from engaging in financial transactions in the U.S. and will freeze any assets under U.S. jurisdiction.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the price tag on proposed fixes to Montana’s Fort Peck Dam following major flooding along the Missouri River could top $225 million.

But with money short, Corps officials said Wednesday they will be able to afford only $46 million in interim fixes for now.

Record snowfalls and massive spring rains in Wyoming and Montana last year prompted the release of unprecedented volumes of water from the Corps’ six Missouri River dams.

The torrent damaged Fort Peck’s spillway gates and eroded areas downstream from the dam, located at the top of the Missouri River system.

Fort Peck Project Manager John Daggett says the planned repairs will ensure the spillway can be used to safely release water during future flooding.