E-Mail This Article to a Friend TALKING POLITICS Nader does it again BY ADAM REILLY

Maybe Ralph Nader won’t matter in 2004. Maybe memories of 2000 — when Nader helped George W. Bush win Florida by siphoning away votes that might have gone to Al Gore — are fresh enough that, this time around, idealistic lefties will vote for the Democratic presidential nominee instead. But this election, like the last one, could be decided by another razor-thin margin in one hotly contested state. If so, Nader could play the spoiler yet again.

The fewer state ballots Nader gets on, however, the less likely this scenario becomes. In 2000, he was listed as a presidential candidate on 43 state ballots. This year, Nader says he intends to get on the ballot in all 50 states. But according to some experts in third-party politics, Nader’s decision to run as an independent rather than as a Green means this won’t be easy. "He’s walking away from [Green Party] ballot lines in about 22 states and a standing army of volunteers," says Micah Sifry, author of Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America. While 30 states have relatively low ballot requirements, he adds, 20 others are "difficult and expensive." "He only did 43 [states] last time, and that was with a major party," Sifry concludes. "So yes, I think he’s going to have a harder time."

Richard Winger, the editor of Ballot Access News, agrees. "It’ll be a struggle, especially since [Nader] is also telling the press that he’s not willing to [use] paid petition circulators," Winger says. While some third parties — like the Natural Law Party, which has a ballot slot in California — might offer Nader a chance to run under their name, Winger still concludes that Nader "really needs the nomination of the Green Party" to come close to his goal.

Without that nomination, and if offers from the Natural Law Party and others aren’t forthcoming, Nader will have to go it alone. In some states, this will be extremely difficult; in California, for example, Nader needs to obtain 153,805 signatures by August 6 to guarantee himself a spot on the ballot. But in other states — including several that were almost evenly split between Bush and Gore in 2000 and will be coveted by both candidates this year — the requirements are far easier. Wisconsin, for example, requires 2000 signatures gathered between August 1 and September 7. In other words, Nader may not get on the ballot in all 50 states. But he won’t have much trouble getting on the ballot in a few states where the Democratic candidate needs to win.

Of course, the Green nomination could still be Nader’s when all is said and done. There’s already a nascent Draft Nader movement among the nation’s Greens; if it develops enough momentum, he could have the Green nomination in hand when the party’s national convention concludes in Milwaukee on June 28. So why didn’t Nader simply maximize his ballot access at the outset by running as a Green? Divisions within the party might have something to do with it. While some Greens want him as their candidate, others desperately want Bush out of office and believe the party shouldn’t run any presidential candidate, or should only run its presidential candidate in states that are sure to go Democratic. As Sifry sees it, Nader isn’t seeking the Green nomination because he doesn’t want to be forced to defend his forget-Florida approach to these potential critics, some of whom are seeking the Green nomination themselves.

"The underlying point is that Ralph prefers to do things on his terms and his terms alone, and working with Greens this time around could’ve meant submitting to a democratic deliberative process that he wouldn’t have full control over," Sifry says. "What you would have seen is a genuine debate, and for Ralph perhaps a bit of an embarrassing one. The guy does not brook criticism all that well."