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."

Comments

Re:Old News

[Zeinfeld]

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.

Last week was a preliminary injunction, this is the hearing. Nader is off and the Florida supreme court has issued an injunction preventing any more ballots being sent out without their permission.

The Bushies did try to do an end run by ignoring the first injunction and sending out as many ballots as they could, but only a few were actually mailed and those are likely to end up being cancelled. The net effect is likely to be damage to Bush since the four counties that sent out the invalid postal ballots are ones where the GOP controls the returning officer - i.e. republican areas.

This whole Nader issue is a GOP shell game. Nader does not have the support of 100,000 floridians that it takes to get on the ballot through petition. He is unlikely to poll that number nationwide. In fact he is unlikely to even qualify for the ballot in enough states to have a mathematical chance of winning.

The 'reform' party does not have a significant national membership, Nader has had four years to form a 'leftwing cretins who want to hand the election to Bush' party and has not done so.

Re:Sad day

[Doc Ruby]

OK, let's move on. Bush missed Florida state law's September 1, 2004 deadline to register to be on the ballot in Florida, so Floridians won't be voting for him, and their 27 electoral votes will go to Kerry, 10% of his victory minimum. OK?