Three constitutional ballot access lawsuits filed by Ralph Nader in 2004 are still pending, in addition to his lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee for conspiring to keep him off as many ballots in 2004 as possible.
Nader’s Hawaii case will have a hearing in U.S. District Court on January 28, 2008. It challenges the practice of requiring an independent presidential candidate to obtain six times as many signatures as an entire new political party. It also challenges a lack of due process when Hawaii checks signatures on petitions.
His Ohio case is pending in the 6th circuit. It is Nader v Blackwell, and argues that past Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell should be held personally liable for permitting initiative petitions to be circulated by any adult, yet at the same time requiring independent candidate petitions to be circulated only by people who had been registered voters in an Ohio precinct for the previous 30 days. At the time, the law had identical requirements for initiative circulators and independent candidate circulators, yet Blackwell relaxed the law for initiatives, and not for Nader. It was obvious at the time that the law was unconstitutional, since in 1999 the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that states cannot force circulators to be registered voters.
Nader’s case against Arizona is pending in the 9th circuit. The oral argument will be in March, 2008, at the earliest. It challenges the early June independent presidential petition deadline (the 2nd earliest in the nation, after Texas’ deadline). It also challenges Arizona’s law that only in-state residents can circulate for an independent presidential candidate.