Nader Hits Washington State for Ballot Access Run

by Mary

Washington State, like its neighbor, Oregon, only requires 1000 valid signatures for getting on the Presidential ballot. Nader, after his Saturday rally in Portland, went to Washington to find 1000 Washington voters in order to gain ballot access.

Whether Nader got the 1000 signatures needed for Oregon is still unknown. There were 1150 people at the Portland rally (a city where in 2000 he easily pulled in 10,000 supporters) and today his campaign turned in the signatures gathered.

In Oregon, State Elections Director John Lindback said Nader supporters turned in 950 petition sheets Saturday, most of them with a single signature, although some of the sheets contained several signatures.

It was not clear how many total signatures there were, but Lindback said, "Their margin is extremely thin." He said it would take a few days for Oregon election officials to tally the signatures and verify whether they were from registered voters.

Nader will have to spend a significant amount of his time and money trying to gain ballot access. Of course, with the deep pockets of his right wing allies, he probably has money to spare.

One of Nader's biggest problems is that many people are becoming aware that in 2000, his goal was to punish the Democrats and what glee he took in hitting Gore hard in the Swing States. (via Altercation)

Nader's swing-state strategy was the crux of his anti-Gore game plan. If Nader had been truly committed to getting the Greens their 5 percent, he would have taken the safe-state route mapped out by many party advisers. In Stupid White Men, Michael Moore says he rejected Nader's invitation to join him in the battleground states as the election neared. Instead, Moore chose to work only "in those states where Ralph could get a lot of votes without being responsible for Bush winning the election." Places like New York, California, Massachusetts, and such liberal enclaves as Bush's own Austin, Texas, as Chait puts it, "offered the richest harvest of potential votes." This is what Reform Party candidate Patrick Buchanan did. Nader took precisely the opposite tack. He spent the last days of the campaign in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and, especially, Florida, which according to Sellers he visited five times all told. Pennsylvania and Michigan went Democratic, but Nader forced Gore to expend time and resources on states he should have had in his pocket. And in Florida, though Nader's poll numbers dipped from 6 percent to 4 to his final 1.6, his 97,488 voters tipped the election.

Maybe the Democrats and the American public haven't been punished enough?