Posted on 09/01/2004 5:50:41 PM PDT by ambrose
Nader disqualified from ballot
09/01/2004
By CHARLES E. BEGGS / Associated Press
Once an admired figure in Oregon, Ralph Nader has failed to qualify for the state's presidential ballot because some petition sheets turned in by his supporters failed to comply with state law, Secretary of State Bill Bradbury said Wednesday.
It was a serious setback for Nader, who captured 5 percent of the Oregon vote in the 2000 presidential election. Now-President Bush was barely defeated by Democrat Al Gore in Oregon in that election, and Democrats contend Gore's slim 6,700-vote margin over Bush was due to Nader.
But Nader has been unable to make the same headway in Oregon this year, especially in the face of an aggressive campaign by the state's Democrats, who have prophesied that Nader's presence on the ballot could tip the state's electoral votes to Bush. Reports also emerged that Oregon Republicans were actively trying to propel Nader onto the ballot.
On Wednesday, an angry Greg Kafoury, leader of Nader's Oregon campaign, said a circuit court challenge to Bradbury's decision would be filed by Friday.
Kafoury, a Portland lawyer, said Bradbury "has joined the national campaign to sabotage Nader's candidacy. Bradbury has dishonored his office and disgraced himself."
Bradbury, a Democrat, is required by law to certify the presidential ballot by Sept. 8. He said the Nader campaign fell about 200 short of the 15,306 registered voters' signatures needed to put Nader on the Nov. 2 ballot.
He said state law is "remarkably clear" in saying that signatures on invalid petitions cannot be counted and that petition sheets have to be numbered before they're turned in to county clerks for signature checking.
The Nader campaign turned in 18,186 signatures overall.
But many sheets were not numbered by the Nader campaign at all, Bradbury said, while numbers on other sheets were altered after counties processed them, but before they were turned in to his office.
Numbering allows sheets to be tracked for checking between the counties and the state elections office.
The Service Employees International Union, which backs Democratic nominee John Kerry and monitored the Nader petitioning, lauded Bradbury's decision.
The secretary of state "ruled on the side of protecting the integrity of Oregon's political process against fraud," said Alice Dale of Portland, a union vice president.
The secretary of state said he expected his decision to be criticized because he's a Democrat but that, "I really was left with no choice but to uphold the law."
Kafoury charged that Bradbury was using "trivial administrative concerns" to throw out thousand of valid signatures.
He said the lawsuit will contend that Bradbury's decision violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment by denying people the right to circulate and to sign political petitions.
Nader has already tried twice this year to get onto Oregon's ballot, to no avail. He held two conventions in Portland but at each failed to attract the needed 1,000 registered voters to sign petitions at those events.
Oregon is considered up for grabs in this year's closely fought presidential election. A Zogby International poll published on Aug. 24 showed Kerry with about 54 percent support among Oregon voters, compared with 43 percent for Bush and 1.5 percent for Nader.
The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
Nader so far is on the ballot in 13 states and Washington, D.C., and can appear on at least five others through his Reform Party endorsement. He has turned in petitions to be on the ballot in at least 15 other states.
Also on Wednesday, Nader lost his federal court bid to get on the Michigan ballot as a Reform Party candidate. And in Pennsylvania, he asked the state Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling barring him from appearing on the state's presidential ballot.
I suspect that his challenge may be successful here. He got enough sigs...
Why are the Democrats trying to disenfranchise voters who want Nader?
I guess that whole "make every vote count irrespective of the letter of the law" thing the Dems adopted in 2000 is no longer, err, "operative".
Independent presidential hopeful Ralph Nader (news - web sites) is considering legal action after he failed to make it on the Massachusetts ballot for November's elections, a campaign aide said on September 1, 2004. In order to qualify for the state's Nov. 2 ballot, Nader needed 10,000 certified signatures, but had only 8,132 by the deadline last night, according to William Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth in Massachusetts. Nader is seen in New York August 31. Photo by Brian Snyder/Reuters
Yes, we all know that the Dems want to protect us against vote fraud. That's why the Oregon Democrats are requiring people to bring ID to the polling place. Not.
Every Nader supporter from a disenfranchised state should go for Bush. Publicly. Now.
What happened to "every vote must count?" I know these signatures aren't votes, but it seems like they're trying to disenfranchise 15,306 people because of 200 people and a county processing error.
-PJ
We need to make sure LaRouche gets on ALL the state ballots also!
This is one area where the fed DOES have a say-so in how the presidential elections (only!) are run.
There should not be any "bar" barring anyone from running for president.
now that I inserted mouth in foot (or is it the other way around?) after readingt what I said, I can see the use of having petitions to have a person placed on the ballot, but there has to be some way to keep these left-wing radicals from stacking the decks against all others.
I should say left-wing AND right wing! Both sides have an interest in keeping the pie all to themselves.
Bend over Nader looks like the DNC stuck it to you again.
The real headline here is:
Democrat Politician Agrees To Abide by the Letter of Election Law
I suspect you are correct. This sounds like RAT tricks to me to try to cushion Kerry in Oregon.
I have not understood the legal gymnastics required under "equal protection" to allow two-tiered criteria for ballot access, with a higher threshold for third-party & independent candidates.
Oregon, just in the recent past, passed a union-sponsored initiative making it much harder to get anything on the ballot, including candidates, via petitioning.
Perhaps if there was a union representing paid-petitioners, they would have gone the other way, and allowed only paid-up union members to pass them.
Did anybody notice the poster behind Mr. Kafoury's desk?
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