filed under Daily Dose
Nader poised to make ballot:
8:12AM ON
07/15/2008
BY
Dave Segal
The one upside to Electoral College and ’safe’-’swing’ state phenomenon is that voters in safe states don’t need to worry about ’spoiler’ candidates. And we needn’t worry much about Nader’s role here:
Ralph Nader’s independent presidential campaign is scheduled to turn in signatures this afternoon to get on the November ballot in Rhode Island — the 10th state where his campaign has formally sought a spot on the ballot.
Nader’s campaign says it will submit more than 2,000 signatures, twice as many as the minimum of 1,000 required, with Rhode Island’s secretary of state.
His campaign also plans to turn in signatures today in South Carolina, and says he will be well on the way to being on the ballot in 15 states by next week.
In Massachusetts, Nader said he has about 17,000 signatures in hand and is aiming for 20,000. He needs 10,000 valid signatures to get on the Bay State ballot.
I’m not a huge Ralph fan these days, for a number of reasons (though I do have a soft spot for his running mate, Matt Gonzalez). Either way, I really wish that Greens and others in the left-leaning third-party and indy politics world would focus on instituting structural electoral reforms, and not on running candidates who have no shot of winning.
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3 Comments on “ Nader poised to make ballot: ”
July 15th, 2008 at 5:17PM
Jim Says:
How do we get institutional electoral reform?
Ideally, after 2000 the Democrats would have made it a high priority. They haven’t and even have blocked Instant Runoff Voting legislation in e.g., Md where they have a sizable majority. In Vermont they passed the legislation by a narrow margin when they have 2-1 and 3-1 majorities in both houses. It was vetoed by a Republican governor and they could not muster the votes to override with that kind of advantage?
It leaves those of us who want single payer health care etc. and will never support pro-war, pro-Patriot Act, pro FISA, pro destabilize latin america candidates like Obama with no option but to keep running candidates who educate on both the issues and the need to structurally end the “spoiler problem”.
Even the rank and file Democrats on dailykos.com can be hostile to IRV when they should be recognizing that it is on par win-win legislation in progressive geo-political jurisdictions.
Nonetheless, we are lucky enough this time to have Matt Gonzalez running with Ralph Nader. Gonzalez was the initiator of IRV in San Francisco and it has now been enacted in about 10 other cities. The effort continues.
http://www.fairvote.org and http://www.votenader.org
[Reply]
July 15th, 2008 at 11:27PM
Sue Says:
Hello Dave,
Many registered Greens agree with you. In fact, in San Francisco members of the Green Party tend to concentrate their efforts locally — with great success. Over the years we have had 6 elected officials and numerous appointed officials. Currently, in fact, the president of the San Francisco Planning Commission, Christina Olague, is a Green.
You should also know that Ralph Nader has never been a registered Green and that Matt Gonzalez is no longer registered Green. They are both decline-to-states, running for president and vice president as independents.
[Reply]
July 16th, 2008 at 1:32AM
Dave Segal Says:
Yup, the SF Greens are a good example of what should be done. Though SF obviously has a broader base of potential Green voters than many towns. Matt’s push for IRV there, and his run for mayor, were great inspirations to me.
Ralph, on the other hand, has never been a strong proponent of IRV. And it’s real hard to forgive some of the sketchy alliances he’s made with the Reform Party and Lenora Fulani’s crew.
[Reply]