On September 7, U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska ruled against Lenora Fulani’s lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee for using public campaign funding to finance its efforts to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot in some states last year. Fulani v McAuliffe, 04-cv-6973.
The decision was not surprising. What is worthy of note, however, is Judge Preska’s lead sentence, and her footnote one. The lead sentence is “This is yet another in a long line of cases in which Plaintiff Lenora Fulani has misused the courts in an attempt to pursue a political agenda which she is not able to accomplish at the ballot box.” A footnote says “A sampling of the at least 35 published cases of this ilk include…” followed by a list of eleven election law cases that Fulani lost.
This is most unfair, because the so-called “sampling” does not reflect that Lenora Fulani won 4 ballot access cases in which she was the lead plaintiff; and the party that nominated her for president, the New Alliance Party, won another 5 cases. Fulani and New Alliance Party cases overturned early petition deadlines in Nevada and Alabama; eliminated the fee that Florida was charging minor parties to have their petitions checked; told Michigan that it could not create and then enforce a new ballot access law in the middle of an election year; told California that it could not impose a 60-day petitioning period for independent presidential candidates; told North Carolina that it had to let new parties run candidates for county office; and told a government-owned shopping center in Maryland that it had to permit petitioning.
