Editorial: Nader must play by rules like everyone else
08/10/2004
Ralph Nader sure has come a long way. The one-time consumer advocate, renowned for fighting government corruption and sticking up for the little guy, now stands accused of cheating some of Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable citizens and trying to perpetrate a huge fraud on the state’s electorate.
The vehicle drawing those accusations is, of course, Nader’s nascent campaign for the presidency. Nader was reviled by some Democrats who say his 2000 effort drew just enough votes in some key states to cost Al Gore the election and put George W. Bush in the White House (with a shove by the U.S. Supreme Court, of course). So those Democrats are determined to avoid the same result in 2004 and have mounted a vigorous counter to Nader’s efforts this year. In Pennsylvania, he’s given them a tempting target. Nader turned in more than 45,000 signatures in Harrisburg last week to get on the November ballot, far more than the 25,697 required by law. It’s how he got those signatures - and how valid they are - that is now in question.
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His operators hired petition circulators to get the necessary names in the required time period, promising them $1 or 75 cents per signature. At least in Philadelphia, many of those circulators came from homeless shelters and, according to witnesses, they didn’t hold fast to the spirit or letter of election law. Circulators were seen exchanging petitions with each other to sign and blatantly lying about the purpose of the petitions to those they solicited for signatures.
The result, according to election law attorneys, is one of the most botched set of documents they’ve ever seen. On Monday, the lawyers filed challenges in Commonwealth Court, claiming the Nader petitions contained more than 30,000 signatures that were invalid because they were forgeries, duplicates or illegible, or were obtained by deception.
That’s not Nader’s only problem. Another Philadelphia attorney filed a class-action lawsuit against the campaign on Monday, claiming it stiffed dozens of circulators who gathered his signatures. In fact, Nader’s Philadelphia campaign office was closed last week after a group of homeless people rioted when they learned they would not be paid for their work.
The Nader camp says its opponents are desperate, are grasping at straws and that it paid all those who deserved payment. Nader’s allies accuse the Democrats of acting undemocratically in trying to deny the voters a third-party choice in the presidential race. Let the voters go to the polls and let the chips (or chads) fall where they may, these voices contend.
That’s balderdash. If Nader or his lackeys played fast and loose with Pennsylvania election law, they deserve to be thrown off the ballot. The Bush and Kerry campaigns operated by the rules. Is there to be a different standard for St. Ralph?
And for someone who built an international reputation for standing up for the poor and the helpless to be accused of cheating homeless people out of the wages they were promised is nothing short of mortifying. The entire misadventure sends a clear signal to Pennsylvania voters. If Ralph Nader is so sloppy about the basic rules of campaigning, would he operate by the rule of law once he was living on Pennsylvania Avenue? That’s a frightening prospect, and a question that clearly needs to be answered.
zwire.com |
