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JAMIE THOMPSONThe state Supreme Court rules 6-1 in favor of the Reform Party candidate, who was on and off the ballot for two weeks.
Ralph Nader is back on the Florida ballot, apparently for good.
The Florida Supreme Court ruled 6-1 Friday that Nader can run as the Reform Party's presidential candidate and appear on the general election ballot.
Nader has pingponged on and off the ballot during the past two weeks after the Florida Democratic Party and a handful of voters argued that the Reform Party did not qualify under state law to nominate a presidential candidate.
A state judge agreed, ordering Nader off the ballot. Florida's top elections official, Secretary of State Glenda Hood, appealed.
Hours after oral arguments on Friday, the Supreme Court ruled the law was too vague to force Nader off the ballot and urged the Legislature to revisit the statute.
"This is a case that should have been thrown out of the courts sooner," said Kevin Zeese, a spokesman for the Nader campaign.
Democrats weren't pleased.
"In state after state, Nader has become an extension of the Republican Party and their corporate backers," Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe said.
The ruling came just in time for local elections officials to meet today's deadline for mailing 25,000 overseas ballots, mostly for military personnel. Some elections offices, such as Hillsborough and Citrus, had printed two sets of ballots - one with Nader, one without - to make the deadline.
Other counties, such as Pasco and Pinellas, waited for the court's ruling and planned to print ballots on office copiers today and rush them to post offices.
In the 2000 presidential election, Nader received 97,000 Florida votes as the Green Party candidate. President Bush won the state by 537 votes, which many Democrats blamed on Nader.
Justice Harry Lee Anstead, who wrote the only dissent, said he agreed with the majority that the state law did not precisely define national convention or national party. But he wrote that wasn't enough to overturn the trial court's decision and put Nader on the ballot.
The latest Nader controversy began on Aug. 31, when the Reform Party state executive committee submitted papers offering Nader as their presidential candidate in Florida.
Gov. Jeb Bush and Hood certified Nader for the ballot.
Later that week, the Florida Democratic Party and several voters filed complaints to remove Nader from the ballot and argued he did not meet state requirements.
State law offers two ways for a minor party candidate such as Nader to appear on the Florida ballot. One requires the party to be affiliated with a national party, which must hold a national convention to nominate a presidential candidate.
The other method says if the minor party is not affiliated with a national party, it must gather signatures from 1 percent of the state's registered voters.
In court, lawyers trying to keep Nader off the ballot argued that the Reform Party is too weak to be considered a viable national party. And even if it were a bona fide party, lawyers argued, the state branch is not affiliated with the national group. Furthermore, lawyers said, the group did not hold a national convention, only a conference call.
Nader argued that the Reform Party convention may have been small but that it had legitimately confirmed him as their presidential nominee.
Leon Circuit Judge P. Kevin Davey agreed that Nader's inclusion was not legitimate, and ordered Hood to strike Nader from the ballot. Hood, who was appointed by Gov. Bush, complied.
But then she appealed that order, putting Nader back on the ballot. More legal wrangling put the matter in the hands of the Supreme Court, which zeroed in on several words in the law to make its decision.
What, justices asked in an unsigned opinion, did lawmakers mean by "national party" and "national convention?" Did a conference call count?
They went looking for answers in statutes, previous court cases, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (which provided little guidance, justices wrote). They focused on definitions by other states. Hawaii, for instance, says a party qualifies as national if it is on the ballot in at least one other state.
And while an argument can be made that the Reform Party no longer meets some definitions of a national party - probably including that set forth by the Federal Election Commission - justices said they could not be certain of state lawmakers' intent when they crafted the statute.
Therefore, justices wrote, they could not rule that a statutory violation had occurred.
"Any doubt as to the meaning of statutory terms should be resolved broadly in favor of ballot access," the justices wrote.
They encouraged the Legislature to revisit the issue.
Nader is now planning a nine-city tour of Florida at the end of the month, starting in Jacksonville and working his way to Miami.
Also Friday, a judge ruled that Nader would stay on the presidential ballot in Colorado. In New Mexico, a judge barred Nader from appearing on the state's ballot as an independent candidate for president.
Times staff writer Lucy Morgan contributed to this report, which also used information from the Associated Press. Jamie Thompson can be reached at jthompson@sptimes.com or 727 893-8455.