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Nader off Florida Ballot
Rory writes "This could be it for Ralph Nader. A Florida judge has issued a preliminary injunction, ruling the Reform Party is no longer a party, thereby knocking its candidate, Ralph Nader, off the Florida ballot. The devil is in the details, and Florida has too many electoral votes for this not to have serious impact on the national election, if this preliminary ruling holds up on appeal."
Who's that? I know Ralph Nader was taken off the ballot, but Nadar? Never heard of him...
This story is a week old. Last I heard Jeb declared the ruling invalid and Nader's on the ballot.
Dear Editors: Like, read the submittals ONCE, if you please.
C'mon, guys, that's really embarrassing.
This happened last week. Since then Florida's AG has launched an appeal which automatically gets Narer back on the ballot for the mailins due to be sent out by Saturday.
Dupetown, USA, but it still warrants a response.
I think it is a sad day in politics if you have to be affiliated with a party in order to run for office, especially President. The constitution protected our right to hold public office before these judges "modified" their interpretations of it for "our own good".
I think the ballot should have as many people as want to run, perhaps with a petition saying x number of people will vote for me, like 5,000 or so.
This is already how many states do it, but this seems a sad attempt by Jeb's good ol' boys to block a change in the outcome of the 2004 election.
Chris
Radar rocks!
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Not that I'm surprised. They're just trying to hold on to power using whatever legal means possible. Perfectly natural behavior.
Doesn't make it right though.
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This concludes our transmission to Oceania.
As a student of History, I understand why the Electoral College exists. What I don't understand is /why/ we're still using it.
I hail from one of the less populous Western states, and we haven't had a presiential candidate, or his running mate, set foot in the state for years. Seems like you just get the five states with the most electoral votes, and ignore the rest of the country.
This is very old news. The case has had about five iterations since then.
From what I have read, the current status is that the Florida Supreme Court has halted the release of abstentee ballots pending a decision in the case that might come Saturday. So far, both a trial judge and an appellate court have found that the Reform party is not a legitimate state party, and so Nader can't get on the ballot. The Secretary of State has appealled both decisions.
And here's a Miami Herald story, that's, you know, actually from today 'n shit.
Interesting that Nader was trying to get on the Florida ballot as the Reform Party's candidate. Hopefully, this will remind folks that Ralph Nader is not the Green Party candidate for President in 2004!
That honor belongs to David Cobb, who is working to build the Green Party from the ground up. Contrast with Nader, who wanted to use the party's (still limited) ballot access to prove a point.
And according to Cobb's site, the Green Party has a ballot line in Florida. Unlike Nader, though, Cobb cares who wins the election:
http://www.votecobb.org/news/camden
"Cobb said he is asking people to vote for him in states like New Jersey, where polls show Kerry is ahead of Bush by 10 percentage points. In states where the race is close, he said he will understand that some liberal voters would support Kerry instead of him."
Nader's time as a candidate is over. So long, and thanks for all the fi^W safety!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
all they care about is winning, and they will shortcircut the system to get it, I say if you want to vote for Nader do a write in, no court can take your right to do that away, Write in Nader 2004
Greens are happy, their candidate is on the ballot. I think this was aimed to piss off Kucinich supporters and convince them they have no choice but Kerry.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
I'm not blaming Dems or Repubs, they're both at fault here.
;-)
Er, don't you mean that you blame Democracts *and* Republicans, because they are both at fault? Just being equally as bad as your neighbour doesn't make you any less guilty. And yes, that's "neighbour" becuase if you're going to come up here to Canada you'd best learn to spell right.
501 Not Implemented
I say if you want to vote for Nader do a write in, no court can take your right to do that away Unless you live in Oklahoma, Hawaii, Louisiana, Nevada, or South Dakota.
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This concludes our transmission to Oceania.
As other's have mentioned, Nader was ordered off, then an elections administrator put him back on the absentee ballots, then the Florida Supreme Court ordered the elections administrator to not send them until it could rule.
In other, more pertinent, news, Michael Badnarik is on 49 ballots. 49, not the low 30s like Nader.
At the end of the day Nader doesn't matter because people have already watched him lose before. Cobb doesn't matter because he can't decide whether he's really a candidate or not ("Vote for me, unless you'd rather vote for Kerry, I mean, vote for me"). Peroutka doesn't matter because he's a religious nut.
Badnarik matters. He is the only candidate on 49 ballots who is against the war. He is the only candidate on 49 ballots who is against the Patriot Act. He is the only candidate on 49 ballots who is not wasting the American people's fucking time with silly accusations about who did or not do what during Vietnam or which memos are fake.
Your conscience called, it wants its vote back.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...let Badnarik debate...
So, check it out. I really like Nader and many of his ideas, but unfortunately, he doesen't have the ability(campaign power|money|back) to really put forth a winning chance. So I read an article like this and all I can say is that I'd really like to care, but unfortunately, one does not go from 6% of the popular vote to 40-50% in less than a year. Sorry, Ralphie. Dark side, or light side. Pick one. Everybody else did.
I am soooooo jealous! We looked into using some of the old blue laws (no visible means of support, public nuisance, rude & disorderly, etc.) to keep them out where I live, but couldn't get any of them to stick.
Our only hope is, with the level of geographic knowledge among presidential hopefuls falling even faster than it is in the population at large, in a decade or two they won't be able to find us.
-- MarkusQ
It's interesting for me to consider:
Insofar as those voting for Nader were more likely to be from the "Gore" camp than the "Bush" camp in the last election, and probably are more likely to be from the "Kerry" camp than the "Bush" camp in this election, isn't/wasn't it in the non-Gore / non-Kerry interest respectively to give Nader as many votes as can possibly be taken from the entire left-of-center field?
For example, I would think giving five thousand dollars to Nader's campaign in Florida would empower the Republican interest more than giving five thousand more dollars to Bush's. (Diminishing returns - Bush already is reaching almost all the republicans, but Nader's campaign is small, and the very very lefts might be swayable).
As I understand it, the margin between Bush and Gore last year was so close in Florida that if Nader had "taken" even slightly fewer votes from Gore (insofar as Nader's votes probably would NOT have gone to Bush instead), Bush could not have prevailed. Hence the vote-swapping among Naderites who were aware of how close swing states would be, but nevertheless wanted their candidate represented. (Vote swapping consisted, as I understand it, of, say, a Massachusetts Gore-ite gentlemanly agreeing with a Florida Nader-ite to vote Nader / Gore respectively.)
Objectively, do you think that Nader gets any support from sources whose soul interest in his campaign is to "take" votes away from the more moderate (but non-zero-chance-of-winning) side?
This post does NOT advocate any political viewpoint.
You guys straight-up suck at reporting on any political story. This is a week old, and since then Katherine Harris' Republican replacement issued an edict saying despite the Reform Party's effective dissolution, Nader will be on the ballot because "we won't have time to discuss it with these hurricanes." Stick with what you sort of know. Every time slashdot ventures into politics, it is a laugh a minute.
"It's a Hobson's choice, a Solomonic decision and it's also a slippery slope," Waas told Davey. "But once it's done here, it's done."
Well, the opera ain't over until a judge changes the outcome of the election in Florida, that's what I always say.
did he just fall off or did it have anything to do with a hanging chad?
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
In contrast, our system encourages the majority party to ram everything they can think of through because in 4 years they could be the ones in the minority, powerless to stop the other party from doing whatever THEY want. Instead of trying to find common ground, we demonize. 51% of the electorate ignoring the wishes of the other 49% isn't compromise, it's what's tearing this country apart.
Come on it's all the same result every year. The top vote getters are always democrats and republicans. Then goes...
Ralph Nader
Mickey Mouse
Howard Stern
Actually I think the whole idea is BS. Nader has said a lot of screwy things but one thing he has right is that Gore/Kerry are not entitled to any democratic party member's vote. They have to earn it. If Gore/Kerry can not get the vote of a person who is inherently inclined to favor them then that is their own damn fault. Blaming Nader is just a pathetic attempt to blame someone else for their own failures and shortcomings. Of course what else should we expect from career politicians.
And no I am not a Nader support, Bush or Kerry are far better choices than Nader. However Nader should have his shot just like anyone else.
Wait, if Bush is allowed to register on Florida's ballot a day after the deadline, then surely we can let Nader sign up?
[o]_O
I submitted this story about a week ago - Sept 9th, I believe. So, I've got to agree with other posters - it's old news. Since then: -the judge's ruling was ignored by the state. -testerday, the story took a turn again, with the same judge ordering Nader's name off the ballot, once again. And tomorrow, Friday, we'll see was the Fla. Supreme Court does. If Slashdot is going to have a politics section, it's going to have to keep it current, so it can compete with the other breaking news sites. Rory
Bush didn't file in Florida as the Republican candidate in time to meet the state's September 1 cutoff. That goofy state prohibits alluding to "September 11" in convention scheduling via a prescient old law. If the Democrats worked from the Karl Rove playbook, without worrying how to manage the country they steal, the whole game would now be over.
--
make install -not war
Mr. X wrote: "At the end of the day Nader doesn't matter because people have already watched him lose before."
So what? I watched the Denver Broncos lose four Superbowls until Elway did the 'impossible' and won two before retiring. Sure, seeking the presidency isn't football, but it may as well be. Giving up on people because they lost is the best way to give in to the other side and lose your own conscience in the process.
On a strangely crossed and similar note, did anyone see the picture on the cover of the Denver Post with Dubya Bush and John Elway standing next to each other?
I can see the 'bummerstickers' now: Schwarzenegger/Elway 2008
favor eliminating the possibility of winner-take-all, and setting up a system where each House vote is determined by popular vote within that district -- states still get to draw the district lines per census
Do you really want the bulk of the electoral college votes to be determined by Congressional districts? Think about it, the Congressional districts are drawn-up to virtually guarantee one party to dominate every ten years. State lines are more difficult to move.
I think what you really want is simply a proportional system where the electoral votes are decided based on the proportion of the popular vote which went to each ticket. Now that might be what you want, personally I like the reasons you listed for the electoral college, so I would not tinker with it unless the voting system would be fundamentally changed to boot. The whole winner-takes-all approach would need to be approached at a different level.
Also look at your approach from the power of the state as well. Now instead of there being a sizable chunk of electoral votes to go after in a contested state, suddenly there are only those few contested congressional districts.
...and we've only got 10 electoral college votes. The big difference is that the western states are already pretty well decided. Wisconsin is nearly even in most polls. Where would you spend the money and time?
That said, many other years the campaigns have ignored Wisconsin.
But, if the electoral college did not exist, what makes you think they'd be any more likely to visit your "less populous Western state"? I think it more likely that they'd stick to areas with larger populations so as to get more bang for their buck.
For crying out loud, the amount of time, effort, emotional energy and money that goes into this spoiler nonsense is just pathetic for a country that calls itself a modern democracy. Either Instant Runoff or Approval Voting would solve this.
My attempts at discussing this with american friends has generally received blank looks or extreme skepticism. Why does this country have such a stubbon resistance to change? Anyone would think I'm asking that them to use the metric system!
What are you, an idiot? Who the hell is going to stop you from taking a pen and writing in a candidate's name?
Are the election police going to look over your shoulder to make sure you punch the ballot and don't write in it? Are they going to confiscate all writing devices before you enter the ballot box? What can they possibly do to stop you from writing in someone's name?
Now, whether or not a write-in will actually be counted is another story. But no one can stop you from actually doing it.