"'Any doubt as to the meaning of statutory terms should be resolved broadly in favor of ballot access,' the five-member majority concluded" (James Dao, "Florida Supreme Court Gives Nader a Spot on State Ballot," <em>New York Times</em>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/18/politics/campaign/18elect.html">September 18, 2004</a>), which is as good a legal decision for democracy as we can hope for in the United States today.
And, as Jenny says, the majority of Florida Supreme Court justices, as well as the majority of the justices who wrote the majority opinion that put Nader on the Florida ballot, are Democratic appointees: <blockquote>And five of the seven current Florida Supreme Court justices participated in the 4-to-3 December 2000 ruling that ordered an immediate manual recount of ballots across the state. That decision was overturned by the United States Supreme Court. . . .
Of the five justices in the majority opinion, three were appointed by Gov. Lawton Chiles, a Democrat, and two by Governor Bush. The two remaining justices were appointed by Governor Chiles. (Dao, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/18/politics/campaign/18elect.html">September 18, 2004</a>)</blockquote>
>I have this (admittedly inartistic and unscientific) difficulty
>believing that there is anyone who'll go to the poll to cast a
>protest vote for, say, RN and then, finding he's not on the ballot,
>vote instead for the Democrats' nominee.
>
>Do the polling guys have some research to, I don't know, correlate
>the difference between the responses they get to "pick from this
>list of three" vs. "pick from these two" with real voting behavior?
>
>/jwc
E.g.
"The Times/CBS News Poll had Bush with 50 percent of the vote, compared with 42 percent for Kerry. When Ralph Nader, an independent candidate, is included, Bush leads by 50 percent to 41 percent, with Nader drawing 3 percent of the vote" (Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder/NYT, "Poll Finds Doubts on Bush, but Trouble for Kerry, <a href="http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=539428.html">September 18, 2004</a>). The majority of Nader/Camejo voters 2004 are not potential Kerry/Edwards voters, and Bush is winning in polls today, Nader or no Nader. In any case, though, just as Kerry is unable and unwilling to defend his anti-Vietnam War record and to call for an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, AnybodyButNader supporters of Kerry are unable and unwilling to confront the reason why Bush is besting Kerry despite the fact that "Americans continue to think that the nation is heading in the wrong direction, and are distressed about how Bush has handled the economy" (Nagourney and Elder, <a href="http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=539428.html">September 18, 2004</a>).
All leftist votes for Kerry the loser are wasted votes.
Jon Johanning jjohanning at igc.org, Sun Sep 19 07:04:15 PDT 2004:
> >And do you really fantasize that the media will give any publicity to
> >_any_ left spokesperson?
>
>Of course, they would, and they have. To get media publicity,
>however, in this day and age, you have to be interesting and even
>entertaining, so that a large number of people will be interested
>in tuning you in. The media are interested in large audiences
<snip>
> > We have to _create_ the audience before the audience will listen to us.
>
>And how do you think that audience will be created?
Is there any left-wing individual committed to independent political action who is drawing as large audiences, and as much media coverage, as Ralph Nader has been since he announced his candidacy on February 22, 2004? -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>