The U.S. Supreme Court, by refusing to review a decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, has upheld a hefty $89,821 penalty levied against Ralph Nader for his failure to obtain ballot access in 2004 during his presidential campaign.
Nader has been ordered to pay the costs of the nineteen lawyers hired by the Democratic Party to challenge his nomination petitions in the Keystone State. This ruling will have a pronounced chilling effect on future candidates in Pennsylvania concerned about large legal bills if they lose. The original bill was $81,102, but has swelled because of interest accrued during the appeal.
Many Democrats blame Ralph Nader for the outcome of the 2000 presidential election where he supposedly siphoned off Democrat voters from the candidacy of Al Gore. Because of that animus, the Democrat Party waged a powerful war of attrition on Nader's 2004 candidacy bringing litigation against Nader in twenty lawsuits in seventeen states. Nader won fifteen of the lawsuits but lost after a hard-fought legal battle in Pennsylvania.
Around the nation, the Democrat Party hired eighty-nine lawyers from forty-eight law firms for the battle to keep Nader off the ballot. Coordinating the legal army was a command group called The Ballot Project whose stated goal was to "neutralize" Nader's campaign by forcing him "to spend money and resources defending these things."
Pennsylvania's restrictive ballot access law required Nader to submit 25,697 nomination petition signatures. Nader doubled that number up and turned in 51,273 signatures. The Democrats sued to challenge Nader's petitions and eleven Pennsylvania judges were assigned to hear the case in courtrooms around the state. Judge James Colins led the judicial team and eventually decided that Nader only had 18,818 valid signatures.
Dissenting from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court majority, which upheld Judge Colins, was Justice Saylor who found that 8,976 of the disqualified signatures should have been permitted, enough to have placed Nader on the ballot.
Emboldened by the state high court support for unbounded discretion, Judge Colins has since assessed the 2006 Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate, Carl Romanelli, with another punitive penalty of $89,668 for failure to make the ballot in a challenge brought again by the Democrats. This new doctrine of imposing stiff financial penalties to losing candidates is expected to sharply reduce candidacies of independent and minor party candidates who can little afford to take the risk of bankruptcy to run for office.
Romanelli had the additional burden, due to a quirk of the election cycle, of needing a whooping 67,000 signatures to place his name on the ballot under Pennsylvania's restrictive election code.
The ruling against Nader is the first of its kind in Pennsylvania and since followed by a similar ruling against Romanelli signals a new method of attack against political opponents that will have a chilling effect on candidate's First Amendment rights. Whether the two major parties start using the tactic against each other, or save the punitive penalties for independent and minor party candidates remains to be seen. Nader's attorneys argued in their brief to the Supreme Court that the Pennsylvania ruling would spread to other states and greatly diminish voter choice in future elections.
[Permission granted to reprint]
Michael Richardson is a freelance writer based in Boston. Richardson writes about politics, law, nutrition, ethics, and music. Richardson is also a political consultant.
I can see why the Iraqis would oppose our brand of Democracy
I'm just not sure why the Democrats are so opposed to it.
I guess the important thing for the Democratic Party isn't that both Gore and Kerry won their elections, or that they still would have won whether or not Nader had been on the ballot, except for voter disenfranchisement, voting machine irregularities, and other shenanigans.
The Democrats aren't going to sue Republican candidates, because having Republicans on the ballot is the ONLY think that makes people vote for Democrats. The Democrats have nothing to offer but the fact that they're not as bad as the Republicans. Without the Republicans, they'd be the worst people on the ballot so they need Republican opponents to make them appear to be the lesser evil.
But having somebody who isn't evil on the ballot is a real threat to them. They've accused Nader of every smear they could think of, but they can't say that he has been consistently pro-war as they have, because he has been consistently anti-war. They can't say that he has been consistently pro-torture as they have, because he has been consistently anti-torture. They can't say that he has been consistently anti-civil rights as they have, because he has been consistently pro-civil rights. They can't say that he has been consistently pro-globalization, pro-outsourcing, pro-deregulation, pro-privatization, or in any other way pro-corporate as they have been, because he has been consistently anti-globalization, anti-outsourcing, anti-deregulation, anti-privatization, and has dedicated his entire life to trying to make corporations behave responsibly towards people and the environment.
So they call him arrogant, spit, sneer, and curse when his name is mentioned, spend millions to try and keep him off the ballot, and go merrily along voting for war, voting for torture, voting to take away our civil liberties, and voting for every corporate welfare bill that comes before them.
They must really resent that Ralph calls the Democrats and the Republicans "the corporate parties." Because it is a truth that they cannot deny. They favor corporate rule over government of, by, and for the people, and they have no concern for the democratic process, only for getting out the vote and raising campaign money.
Keeping somebody off the ballot in America is the filthiest act against our Constitutional right to elect our representatives since voting machines were introduced.
No wonder so many people are opposed to ALL political parties. We want to select our candidates and to elect them ourselves. The political parties seem to exist solely to subvert the will of the people and force us to settle for whatever crumbs they'll throw us, instead letting us select and elect candidates who will represent us, instead of representing the corporations who contribute the most to the political parties.
If the Democrats had spent as much trying to make sure that every vote was counted in 2004, as they had promised, instead of spending it on trying to keep Nader off the ballot, Kerry would be President right now. But that's not what they wanted. They never objected to Bush being President, they conceded to him two presidential elections in a row that they had actually won, and they refuse to even consider impeaching him now. Bush is not their enemy, Nader is. Because Bush is the one responsible for all their war profits, whereas Nader would put an end to them.
Don't let yourself be fooled by Democratic posturing about lobbying reform and anti-war-profiteering legislation. They can do that safely, knowing that their long-term friend and colleague, George W. Bush, will veto them before they can become law. And then they can blame him, because he vetoed their beautiful legislation, which they knew he would when they took impeachment off the table.
These are the most despicable politicians the world has seen since WWII. They know that they cannot pass anything with Bush holding veto power, and they are pretending that they might be able to instead of impeaching Bush so that they REALLY would be able to. Ooooh, it's all that bad man's fault, but I can't impeach the bad man because it wouldn't be "politic," meaning I have to do some things I don't want to do, just to keep my base from abandoning me, but I need Bush there to make sure these things don't pass, so that I can blame him instead of having people blame me.
It makes me sick that there are still people who can't see through their act. It is so old, stale, and phoney, that nobody with half a brain should be falling for it any more.
Thanks for posting, Michael. Guess it is time to send Ralph another donation. Well, I owe him. He stood up for our voting rights and demanded recounts when the Democrats refused. Not to mention that almost every bit of worker and consumer protection this country has ever had is thanks to Ralph.
Ralph Nader, the man the corporations named as "the most dangerous man in America," is also the man that the Democrats hate the most. I know that Ralph's always been on my side, but where the hell have the Democrats been? Probably off sucking up to and being collegial and nonpartisan with the Republicans, as usual, and voting against our interests every chance they get.
The Democrats know that Nader can't draw enough votes to cause them to lose an election to a Republican. He never has and he never will. They want him off the ballot because he makes them look bad. And they're stupid enough to think that keeping him off the ballot will make them look good. It makes them look good to the big corporations, but it doesn't make them look good to anyone who cares about our Constitution and the democratic process. They shouldn't call themselves Democrats, they should call themselves, "Democrats Against Democracy," because that's what they are.
--Mark
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Friday, January 12, 2007 at 1:30:47 AM
The burden was on the DEMOCRATIC PARTY to prove that the candidate is not eligible due signature requirements. THEY decide how many lawyers to hire and how much resources to commit. They need to suck up the bill as a cost of doing business.
If they can prove that there was intentional fraud to prod the Dems to spend that money, that's another story.
by
Bill Chadwick (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Thursday, January 11, 2007 at 2:26:12 PM
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