Burnt Orange Report

Nader Fails in Arizona, Indiana

By Byron LaMasters

Good news this week on the Ralph Nader front. Nader is way short in getting ballot signatures in Indiana. He needs 30,000 signatures, and has only 9000. The deadline is next Wednesday:

Ralph Nader's Indiana coordinator says the independent presidential candidate probably won't make it on the state ballot this November. Dallas Stoner said Nader's Indiana committee has collected only about nine-thousand of 30-thousand signatures needed to get the candidate's name on general election ballots. The deadline to collect the required number of signatures is noon Wednesday. Nader is not yet on any state ballot. He has been endorsed by the national Reform Party, which has ballot lines in seven states, including the battlegrounds of Florida and Michigan. His campaign has said he expects to appear on the ballot in 45 states. Stoner said the Nader committee will continue to seek signatures until Wednesday's deadline.

In Arizona, the state Democratic party has filed a lawsuit claiming that 15,467 of the 21,512 signatures for Nader's ballot petition in Arizona are invalid. The suit alleges that many of the signatures were by people that were ineligible to vote, or were circulated by convicted felons. The Tucson Citizen has the details:

Arizona Democrats have filed a lawsuit challenging the vast majority of signatures on Ralph Nader's nominating petitions gathered in the state. Party officials expect the challenge to the independent presidential candidate will keep him off the state's November ballot.

The suit, filed by Phoenix lawyer Andy Gordon yesterday in response to scrutiny by Democratic party volunteers, alleges that 15,467 of the 21,512 signatures Nader's campaign collected in Arizona are invalid. That would leave Nader 8,649 shy of what he needs to be listed on the ballot.

"We are very, very confident of the numbers ... and we are very confident that Mr. Nader will not be on the ballot," said Jim Pederson, Arizona's Democratic Party chairman.

Democrats are doing a good job taking care of Nader this cycle. John Kerry and Terry McAuliffe have stayed above the fray. They've gone out of their way to reach out to Ralph Nader, and they've sent surrogates like Howard Dean to reach out to potential Nader supporters. On the other hand, the grassroots activists and state parties have played their part in checking signatures and preventing Nader from gaining ballot access in as many places as possible. I've been attacked by commenters before for gloating at the fact that Nader won't be on the ballot in Texas. Sure, Texas will go for Bush, but the less states that Nader makes the ballot, the less seriously that people will take him. It'll be hard for Nader to launch any creditable attack against Democrats over allowing Nader in the debates if Nader is only on the ballot in 20 states. Finally, it's not a grassroots movement that is seeking to place Nader on the ballot. Republicans want Nader on the ballot to take votes away from Ralph Nader. In Arizona, around 65% of the Nader petition signers were Republicans. I'm sure that the same is true elsewhere.

Posted by Byron LaMasters at June 24, 2004 07:41 PM | TrackBack