September 7, 2004
Nader Denied
A couple of weeks ago, it was reported that Ralph Nader was likely going to be on the Virginia presidential ballot, after Attorney General Jerry Kilgore ordered that Nader's petitions be accepted.
In a move sure to warm the cockles of a Kerry-lover's heart, Nader was today denied a spot on the ballot by the State Board of Elections, the Post reports.
Nader fell short of getting the required 10,000 certified signatures on his qualifying petitions, said Jean Jensen, secretary of the Board of Elections. The board was to meet Tuesday."He needed 10,000 and we were able to verify 7,342," Jensen said.
Nader had submitted about 12,900 signatures, and local voter registrars and the state board's election services workers cross-referenced all the signatures with local voter lists.
Nader's inclusion on the Virginia ballot has been a major issue in the past few months because it's a possibility that the commonwealth, for the first time in 2 million years, might vote Democratic.
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"Jensen, a former chair of the state Democratic Party, said nearly half of the 13,000 signatures submitted by Nader's campaign "were either residents of Virginia but not registered to vote, residents of other states, or totally illegible.""
If this is true, I don't think she really had much of a choice. Is it true? Probably. Hopefully. But that's the rub, isn't it?