Early in the 2016 Republican primaries, when Donald Trump was still a novelty item, those who supported him repeatedly justified their support by saying, "Donald Trump is competent.  He gets things done."  Not all candidates live up to that praise, including candidates who strongly imply that their Asian genetics promise superior intelligence.

During his decades-long career as a major real estate developer, Trump developed a reputation for getting big jobs done fast and under budget.  For example, sooner or later, every conservative New Yorker who supported Trump would bring up Wollman Rink in Central Park.

Native New Yorkers knew the rink as one of the glories of post-WWII New York, but in the 1970s, it had become so decayed that Mayor Ed Koch closed it in 1980, with the promise that the city would repair it and re-open it in 1985.  By 1986, not only was the rink still unfinished, but the city had run over its original $4.7-million budget by $12 million.

Enter Donald Trump, a brash young developer who had built Trump Tower, which some saw as a renaissance in New York high-rises and others as a monstrosity.  Trump also had a score to settle with Koch, whom he viewed as anti-business.  In June 1986, Trump promised that he would get the rink finished and open by Christmas.

Trump did not meet that promise.  Instead, he exceeded it, opening the rink to the public on November 1.  True, Wollman Rink was a small project, but when one considers the almost $17 million that that the city government spent to do nothing versus the six months it took Trump to finish his gift to the city — well, that resonated.  Trump is competent.  He gets things done.

That remained true throughout Trump's career.  Sometimes, in the up-and-down world of high-end real estate, things went badly, and he had to regroup, but Trump would always come out ahead.  When he entered reality TV, he got things done there, too, for The Apprentice was a huge hit in its first season, and for several years, it remained one of the more successful TV reality shows.

People believed — rightly — that if Trump attained the highest executive office in the land, he would get things done there, too.  Whether one likes Trump or not, one cannot deny that he's been effective, an especially impressive feat, given the Democrats' almost mindless hostility to his every effort.

Enter Andrew Yang.  Yang has trafficked on his reputation for being the smart Asian.  He introduced himself to America in the first Democrat primary debate as "the Asian man who likes math."  He had consistently tried to impress on the American people that he's the kind of competent, compassion-driven capitalist who will use his math skills to raise Americans up.

It turns out, though, that while Yang may know math, his managerial competency is open to question, for his campaign workers' errors left him locked out of the Ohio primaries:

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang will not appear on the Ohio primary ballot in March after his campaign failed to submit the proper documents to the Secretary of State's office as required by law. As a result, Yang announced that he will instead launch a write-in campaign in the Buckeye State.

While it appears Yang — who wears a "Math" pin on his lapel and has vowed to give everyone in America a cash payment of $1,000 per month — collected the number of signatures required in order to appear on the ballot, his canvassers neglected to fill out the top portion of the forms that identify the candidate.

Ohio law requires that petitions contain information clearly identifying the name of the candidate and his party, along with the candidate's signature. Rather than circulating a single petition around the state, candidates use what's called "part-petitions" so that multiple canvassers can travel around collecting signatures. A Candidate Requirement Guide published at the Ohio Secretary of State's website explains: "Candidates may make additional copies of the form as it is provided by the county board of elections. Once the candidate has completed filling out and signing the petition, this signed part-petition may be copied prior to obtaining any elector signatures on the part-petitions." The Ohio Revised Code makes clear that "The declaration of candidacy so signed shall be copied on each other separate petition paper before the signature of electors are placed on it."

There's nothing ambiguous about it, but Yang's campaign team either didn't read the rules or chose to ignore them. Rather than presenting the identifying information — the declaration of candidacy — to voters when collecting signatures, it appears his circulators simply asked electors to sign on the dotted line without indicating on the form who the candidate was. When the petitions were submitted to the Secretary of State's office, many of the part-petitions were missing the required candidate information.

There's only one question voters need to ask at this point: if Yang is too incompetent even to run his own campaign, why should the voters trust him to run the United States of America?