With Nader, Dems unfair at any speed

29 September 2004

Tomorrow night's debate in Coral Gables, Fla., will be missing someone: Ralph Nader. The center stage of the 2004 presidential circus has been the contest between George W. Bush and John Kerry - a battle that promises to become even more aggressive and vitriolic than it is right now. Yet a significant sideshow has been the saga of Ralph Nader, the man who beat Al Gore, the Republicans' secret weapon, the Democrats' bane - and a candidate whose shameful treatment raises disturbing questions about the state of American democracy.

The problem is this: Rather than running a campaign, Nader has had to spend his time and money simply getting on the ballot.

As of this writing, voters in 31 states will be able to vote for Nader. Those in the other 19 - including California and Virginia - won't have that opportunity. Even this number has come about only after arduous efforts by the Nader camp.

And why has Nader encountered such difficulty? Because the Democratic Party has gone out of its way to stop him. Democrats or their surrogates have fought Nader's right to be on the ballot at every step along the way. Sometimes they've been successful; recent decisions in Oregon, Arkansas and New Mexico so far have gone against Nader. In other cases, they've lost; the Florida Supreme Court just last week reversed a lower court order and put Nader back on the ballot.

Of course, it's easy to see why the Democrats are making this effort. As far as they're concerned, Nader cost them the 2000 election. Democrats fear a repeat. Nader appeals to the hard-core antiwar crowd, many of whom see only differences of degree between Kerry and Bush's position on Iraq. Those are votes, Democrats argue, that otherwise would go to Kerry.

So the Democrats' tactics are understandable - not admirable, but understandable. They are much like a tavern owner who fights to stop the awarding of a liquor license to an upstart. They don't want competition.

What is not understandable, however, is that we allow this game to be played at all.

After encountering the same kinds of problems in his 2000 campaign (proving, by the way, that Republicans hold no moral superiority to Democrats when it comes to ballot-access issues), Sen. John McCain helped create the Reform Institute, a nonprofit that focuses how we administer elections. The institute surveyed all 50 states. The results were depressing. With only two exceptions (Connecticut and Georgia), states go out of their way to favor nominees from the two main parties and to disadvantage the rest. Typically, this means making it easy for Republicans and Democrats to get on the ballot while raising the bar for anyone else. In Florida, for example, major party candidates get on the ballot automatically; others need over 90,000 signatures. California requires over 150,000 signatures for independents and third parties, but only 26,000 for nominees by the two major parities.

On top of that, the technicalities of signature gathering make it hard for less well-organized candidates. New York and Wisconsin require signatures be turned in nine months prior to an election. Virginia only allows residents to sign one petition. Other states have requirements about notarization or arcane rules about the form of a person's signature and address.

And why? The rationales behind the signature requirements are laughable. Some assert they exist to ensure only "serious" candidates appear. Others claim voters would be confused by too many names on a ballot (although, as the Reform Institute points out, the California gubernatorial recall election, with 135 candidates, posed no such problem).

In fact, it's almost impossible to escape the conclusion that the goal is to maintain the power of the major parties.

I hold no particular brief for Ralph Nader. I think him an unpleasant, curmudgeonly and self-centered man. And given that I'd prefer Kerry win, there's part of me that can't help but take pleasure in his travails.

But so what? This is a democracy, not a dictatorship. Nader should be an available choice to voters. The fact that he is not breeds cynicism, stifles debate and makes U.S. elections look like the charades once practiced in Soviet Russia.

The lesson many people took from the mess Florida made of its presidential election four years ago was that the right to have one's vote counted is of critical importance. Equally important, however, is the right to vote for whom you wish. Fighting to keep Nader off the ballot subverts democracy as surely as did discarded ballots in 2000.