Thursday, Sept. 2, 2004 | 11 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- A District Court ruling to keep independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader on the ballot in Nevada will have "a marginal effect at best" on the state's election results, a political scientist said.
Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said Wednesday that "Democrats are overstating the impact Nader has on their candidate" John Kerry.
The comments came after District Judge Bill Maddox of Carson City rejected the efforts by the Democratic Party to exclude Nader from the ballot on allegations there was fraud, misrepresentation and defective documents in his nominating petition.
Maddox, after hearings covering three days, said there are at least 7,000 signatures of registered Nevada voters on the petition to qualify Nader for the ballot. The law required Nader to get 5,000 signatures.
Nader's campaign also vowed Wednesday to appeal a decision by Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury that Nader won't appear on Oregon's Nov. 2 ballot because of "irregularities" in numbering Nader's petition sheets.
The state Elections Division ruled that Nader's campaign turned in only 15,088 valid signatures -- 218 shy of the amount needed to qualify for the ballot as an independent.
The Nevada case appears headed to higher court, as Rebecca Lambe, executive director of the state Democratic Party, said the party intends to appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court. She said the party disagrees with the judge's interpretation of the law that allowed more than 3,000 signatures to be counted on the Nader petiton.
Theresa Amato, national campaign manager for Nader, said she agreed with the Maddox decision. "This is a orchestrated assault by the Democrats against ballot access by those voters who want choices."
She said the Democrats are practicing "an abuse of power that is not in the best interests of the voters."
Herzik, interim dean of the UNR College of Liberal Arts, said those who vote for Nader don't like either party. "Nader presents an outlet for the protest vote," he said. Four years ago Nader ran as well, and if all of his votes in Nevada had gone to Democrat Al Gore, George W. Bush would have still carried the state, Herzik said.
Supporters of Nader gathered 11,888 signatures of voters in Nevada this year and the Clark County Registrar of Voters said there were 8,631 valid names on the petition to qualify Nader.
Democrats fear Nader could take votes away from Kerry in a close election. Recent polls in Nevada show Nader getting 2 percent to 4 percent with Kerry and Bush running neck-and-neck.
Paul Larsen, representing the Nevada Democrats, contended there were ineligible voters counted, defective petitions, fraud and misrepresentation in gathering the signatures by petition circulators of a firm named JSM Inc. headed by Jennifer Breslin of Florida. He questioned her credibility, saying she hired an ex-felon to collect signatures but this man had his wife sign the documents; she also allegedly tolerated the collection of fraudulent signatures and she had troubles in other states. Breslin denied those allegations.
Larsen said a review of the signatures found only 3,505 were legitimate. But Keith Loomis, attorney for Nader, told Maddox that the 'Democrats are trying to gum up the works on technicalities." He said there were 9,000 signatures of registered voters that should be counted on the petition.
A key question in the case was whether petitions bearing the signature of 3,529 registered voters should be counted because the circulator had put his residence as a hotel in Las Vegas and not his "legal domicile" that was probably in another state.
Maddox ruled that the regulations of the Secretary of State's office require the circulator, when signing the document, put down his residence, not his legal domicile. So those petitions bearing those signatures should be counted.
Larsen had argued that petition circulators should have been required to put their real home address so they could be contacted later and questioned about the petitions or even subpoenaed to answer inquiries how the process was conducted.
Maddox characterized the petition circulators as "carnival workers" and some of them "are not upstanding citizens." But he said the regulation does not require the "legal domicile" to be written down. And, he said, there's no authority to subpoena people who live out of state.
Lambe said she agreed with the Senior Deputy Attorney General Vicki Oldenburg who argued that the circulators must put down their legal residency, not a Las Vegas hotel.
Maddox said the U.S. Supreme Court did "a disservice" when it ruled that these circulators did not have to be registered voters or residents of the state they were working in.
The judge disqualified 559 signatures of those who registered to vote after they signed the petition. He said 2,719 who signed were not registered to vote. He disqualified 64 signatures that he said were obtained by misrepresentation and six signatures that were forgeries.
Renee Parker, chief deputy secretary of state that handles elections in Nevada, said the ruling by Maddox was a fair one. She said she will ask the next Legislature to specify that the circulator must disclose his legal domicile.
Maddox said early in the case he was making a record at the proceeding in the expectation that whichever side lost, would appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court.
Amato said the Nader campaign hopes to qualify in 43 states and the District of Columbia. The Nader organization won a place on the ballot in Iowa last week, she said. The qualifying process ends Sept. 16 across the nation.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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