Making use of an unusual rule, Nader targets the Oregon ballot
Monday, March 29, 2004 8:03 AM PST
By Associated Press
Printable version
E-mail this articleSALEM -- To get on the Oregon presidential ballot, all Ralph Nader needs is 1,000 registered voters to gather in one place and sign their names on a petition.
In a state that has given him strong support in the past, Nader probably will have no problem getting those signatures when he shows up at a Portland theater on April 5 to take advantage of Oregon's quirky election law. The event may make Oregon the first state in the nation where he qualifies for the November ballot.
"It's an early way to get on the ballot and save a lot of resources," Nader said of Oregon's Assembly of Electors law.
Nader has already shown he can attract crowds in Oregon. He drew a paying audience of 7,000 in Portland in 2001, a year after the last presidential race. So getting 1,000 signatures shouldn't be "a big hurdle at all," said Portland political analyst Jim Moore. "It should be relatively easy."
Nader's campaign as an independent this year has been called an "ego trip" by his detractors, who say George W. Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore in 2000 because Nader siphoned off Democrats' votes and that Bush could get re-elected this year because of the Nader factor.
Still, Nader is forging ahead.
"We're running a 50-state campaign, trying to get on all the ballots," Nader told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Not all state ballots will be as accessible to independents as Oregon's, however, although some require only that a candidate pay a fee. In others, the bar is much higher.
Jason Kafoury, Nader's field director, said the candidate is devoting the most amount of time to qualifying for ballots in the "10 to 15 toughest states."
Nader's interview was by phone from North Carolina -- among the states he criticizes as having unfairly burdensome ballot access laws. To qualify there, he said, he has to gather 99,000 signatures or create a new political party and get almost 52,000 signatures from people agreeing to support that effort.
In Texas, he has to collect 64,000 signatures between March 10 and May 10 from registered voters who didn't vote in either the state's Democratic or Republican primaries.
"The two-party duopoly has created an array of laws, institutions and attitudes against broadening the electoral system," Nader said in a statement he released while campaigning in North Carolina.
In Oregon, the legal threshold lower and Nader's support is high. In the 2000 election, when he was the Green Party's candidate, Nader garnered 5 percent of the Oregon vote and polls indicate he could do the same this year. That was nearly double his national average. Because of the Nader factor, Gore was just barely able to defeat Bush in liberal-leaning Oregon.
At the Nader event April 5 at Portland's Roseland Theater, he will need to collect the signatures within 12 hours. Organizers are billing the affair as fun -- sporting refreshments and a band -- as well as a rallying time for backers of the citizen activist.
"It's important that people who support Ralph get together. It's going to be a party," said Portland lawyer Greg Kafoury, a longtime Nader friend and field director, and Jason Kafoury's father.
Oregon's Assembly of Electors law is one of only two such rules in the country, said Richard Winger, publisher of the San Francisco-based monthly newsletter Ballot Access News.
The only similar process is in Washington state, where independents can get on the ballot by collecting 200 voter signatures at "conventions." Winger said that could amount to, for example, holding meetings at eight different locations at the same time and collecting 25 signatures at each.
In Oregon, Michelle Branum, a Corvallis attorney and self-described "facilitator" for the Portland assembly, said she's optimistic enough people will show up. Word is being spread by contacting Oregonians who have volunteered through Nader's national Web site, by newspaper advertising and by calling registered voters.
The "electors assembly" procedure isn't often used but has succeeded in nominating independents for president as well as for state offices. John Anderson got on the presidential ballot in Oregon that way in 1980, opposing Democratic President Jimmy Carter and Republican Ronald Reagan.
Some such assemblies have been offbeat.
Marijuana legalization activist Bill Conde made his annual hemp festival an assembly of electors in 2001. He failed to get enough voter signatures to nominate him for governor, but the event was well-attended by sheriff's officers.
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