Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004 | 10:50 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- Consumer advocate Ralph Nader will be on the Nevada ballot as a candidate for president.
The Nevada Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously rebuffed the efforts of the Democratic Party to knock Nader off the ballot. The Democrats had argued that there was fraud and misrepresentation in the drive to gather signatures to qualify Nader for the ballot.
The court, in its 7-0 ruling, said the election laws "must be liberally construed to effectuate the will of the electors."
"Here, a significant number of registered voters signed the petition to place Ralph Nader on the November ballot, and their interest in having the choice to vote for him should not be negated."
The decision upholds the ruling of District Judge Bill Maddox who ruled there were sufficient signatures on the petition to qualify Nader as an independent candidate.
This marks the third time that Nader has been a presidential candidate on the Nevada ballot.
In 1996, Nader polled 4,730 votes in Nevada where President Clinton won by about 4,700 votes in the state. Nader in 2000 received 15,008 votes with 2.46 percent of the vote. In that year George W. Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore by about 22,000 votes.
Democrats are worried that Nader will draw votes that otherwise would have gone to John Kerry. Some recent polls show Nader receiving anywhere from 2-4 percent of the Nevada vote.
Theresa Amato, national campaign manager for Nader, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Nader supporters had 11,888 signatures on their petition to put Nader on th ballot, and the Clark County Registrar of Voters said 8,631 of them were valid signatures of voters. Nader needed only 5,000 signatures of registered voters to qualify for the ballot.
Maddox found there were at least 7,000 signatures of registered voters on the petition, so Nader qualified for the ballot.
The Supreme Court said Maddox did not make any factual finding on the fraud and misrepresentation but "implicitly found that the petition was otherwise sound. A determination that the process was not overrun by fraud is supported by substantial evidence in the record."
Democrats maintained that Nader was backed by Republicans and the petitions were defective and should not have been considered.
The Democrats also maintained that the petitions were invalid because the circulators who submitted affidavits as to the validity of the signatures, lived in hotels instead of permanent homes. They also alleged that some people were tricked into signing the documents and that many of the signers were not registered voters.
Jon Summers, spokesman for the Nevada Democratic Party, said he was disappointed with the court ruling and said Nader should disavow the Republican effort to qualify him for the ballot. Summers said John Kerry stands for many of the same core issues as Nader -- more jobs, a clean environment and halting the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump plan.
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