The Election Law Journal, volume 7, number 4 (December 2008) has an article, “Judicial Decision-Making in Nader’s Ballot Access Litigation” by Kyle C. Kopko. The article is 24 pages long. It concludes, in part, “Although much of the judicial politics literature indicates that judges behave in a partisan manner when deciding cases that involve a partisan interest, this did not occur in the context of Ralph Nader’s 2004 ballot access litigation…Even those judges who donated money to the Democratic or Republican Parties, the very individuals who should be the most partisan of all the judges included in the dataset, were not predisposed to rule in a way that favored their own political party.”
In other words, even though Ralph Nader was perceived in 2004 to injure Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, Democratic judges were just as likely to rule in favor of Nader as Republican judges. The article studies all the state court decisions on whether Nader should have been on the 2004 ballot.
The article, of course, does not deal with the issue of whether Nader actually injured John Kerry’s campaign. An analysis in the January 1, 2005 (printed) Ballot Access News suggests that Nader did not, in fact, injure Kerry.
Richard!
Is a link to this article available to the public?
Unfortunately the Election Law Journal is published for profit, and only subscribers may see it on-line. Also I think people who subscribe to Westlaw or Nexis-Lexis can get it.
Try this site Michael;
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/elj.2008.0002
I don’t see what’s new. It’s phrased as Dems were just as likely as Repubs to put him on the ballot–better stated as Repubs and Dems were just as likely to keep him off the ballot. The fact that they kept him off may not be for partisan reasons, but that both parties are under the influence of corporate interests. Again, what’s new?
Are Donkey and Elephant judges equally brain dead ignorant about SEPARATE IS NOT EQUAL — as applied to ballot access cases ???
Also that every election is NEW and has ZERO to do with any prior election.
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No party hack caucuses, primaries and conventions are needed.
Equal ballot access via equal nominating petitions.
P.R. legislative
A.V. executive/judicial.
SOOOOOO difficult to understand for the many election law M-O-R-O-N-S in the U.S.A.
Nader didn’t hurt Kerry because the state that made the difference(Ohio) didn’t put Nader on the ballot, and there were no states where Bush won yet Kerry & Nader collectively got more votes than him.
Without seeing the article, it’s hard to tell, but from Richard’s report one would suspect that the flaw in the author’s thesis is that it does not consider the posibility that BOTH Democrat and Republican judges have a great prejudice toward any interloopers from outside the two-party monopoly!
Sincerely, Chris Driscoll, media director for Nader/Gonzalez 2008