After following a judge's order to remove Ralph Nader from the ballot, Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood decided Monday to repeal the ruling.
Published September 15, 2004
Four days after certifying a presidential ballot without the name of Ralph Nader, Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood reversed field Monday in ways that are hauntingly reminiscent of 2000. Hood, the appointee of a Republican governor who happens to be the brother of President Bush, decided to disregard the same circuit judge whose order she had followed on Thursday.
The Florida Supreme Court needs to settle this matter and quickly.
Hood tried to suggest politics played no role in her decision, but if political connections don't explain her change of heart, little else does. On Thursday, after Leon Circuit Judge Kevin Davey issued an order removing Nader from the ballot because his Reform Party nomination was deemed to be a sham, Hood dutifully followed suit. She delivered the official ballot, without Nader, to 67 elections supervisors. Her representatives carefully characterized their role as "ministerial" and said they would follow the dictates of the judge.
On Monday, a very different Hood emerged. She appealed the ruling herself as a way of putting Nader's name back on the ballot she had certified on Thursday without. This time, Hood spoke of a different obligation: "We have a responsibility to voters to make sure they are able to exercise the right to vote."
With or without Nader on the ballot, all voters will be able to exercise their right. But the messy way in which Hood has now injected herself into yet another partisan presidential fight in Florida only undermines her own authority in that regard. She and Gov. Jeb Bush took the opportunity Monday to criticize Davey for the manner of his ruling, saying they were "frustrated and outraged" by the judge's decision to delay a final hearing until today. But Davey's hearing schedule was known when Hood made the opposite decision on Thursday.
The only visible change since Davey made his ruling and Hood made her initial decision is that Nader enlisted the legal support of Kenneth Sukhia. Sukhia is a former federal prosecutor who once was nominated by President Bush to become a federal judge and who represented Bush in the agonizing Florida ballot count in 2000. He and other Republican activists who want Nader to take votes from Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in Florida are well within their rights to take their case to the proper judicial venues, but Hood, at this point, can hardly characterize herself as "an honest broker."
The question of whether Nader's name should lawfully appear on the Florida ballot is not an easy one. It may well need to be sorted out by the courts. But Davey, the first judge to rule, made some compelling points. State law requires candidates who want to appear on the presidential ballot to gather the signatures of 1 percent of all qualified voters in the previous general election, which is roughly 93,000. The only way around that requirement is to be the nominee of a major or minor party. Minor parties are supposed to be "affiliated with a national party holding a national convention."
Nader, spurned by the Green Party and apparently unwilling or unable to gather signatures, turned to the Reform Party. But that "national" party, by the testimony of its own treasurer, has $181.18 in its bank account and changed its own bylaws in order to hold a conference call, numbering maybe 25 people, to name Nader as its candidate. Whether 93,000 signatures is too much to ask of alternative candidates is a matter worthy of legislative debate, but, given that standard, it hardly seems consistent under law to allow a candidate to forgo such a requirement on the basis of a conference call with 25 people.
Nader, who has rightfully complained about the disgraceful tactics of pro-Democrat groups that have bullied signature gatherers and thrown up legal roadblocks in other states, can assign himself some measure of blame in Florida. By all appearances, he was using the Reform Party as a way to game the system.
Hood, on the other hand, is showing herself to be particularly adept at arguing with herself on matters of importance to the 2004 presidential election. She resolutely defended a flawed list of potential felons who would be prevented from voting - that is, until newspaper reports of gross errors forced the hand of the governor, and she scrapped the list. In her latest reversal, she argues in part that the Nader name can be more easily removed from, rather than added to, ballots if the courts ultimately rule he violated state law. She's probably right, which makes one wonder why that point didn't occur to her last week.
Given the explosive politics associated with Florida's presidential election, Hood can't reasonably expect people to believe her motives this time are pure.
