Ralph

I've heard many people cite the "Ralph Nader effect" as a reason to vote strategically on October 14. Even Elizabeth May said, "I don't want to be the Ralph Nader of Canada." So I'll say this once more for the record: Ralph Nader DID NOT make Al Gore lose in 2000. It's all public knowledge for anyone who cares to look.

By the official count, Bush beat Gore by a few hundred votes in Florida. The theory since then is that Gore would have won if 500 Florida Nader voters had voted for Gore instead. (And Gore would have stopped Enron, 9/11, Katrina, you name it...) But there's far more to the story than that. Hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters were disenfranchised in swing states (including Florida) through Diebold machines, arcane voting rules, spurious criminal records, inadequate polling stations, etc. In fact, Florida itself was going for Gore, but the Supreme Court stepped in to stop the vote count when Bush was temporarily in the lead. When the recount was completed weeks later, it was found that Gore won Florida and hence the Presidency. Again in 2004 (when Nader wasn't even running!) Bush won amid widespread vote fraud. It's entirely possible McCain will win fraudulently next month as well.

Furthermore, Nader attracted very different voters than Gore. He raised issues like Pentagon profiteering, corporate control of the political process, addiction to fossil fuels, criminalization of the poor, etc., which neither Bush nor Gore would address. (Gore has become a progressive poster boy since he released An Inconvenient Truth, but in 2000 he showed no sign of a pulse, let alone progressive ideals.) However, the rules made it effectively impossible for Nader to win, so it was 100% a protest vote. If Nader hadn't run, those voters would likely have stayed home not voted for Gore.

The reason there is such a sustained anti-Nader campaign is because the US establishment--including the Democratic leadership--doesn't want the political/economic system itself to be called into question. If Nader is ridiculed and marginalized, it allows the press to avoid answering (or even asking) the questions that Nader and others like him want to address.


Can the real "Nader effect" happen here? There is occasionally small-scale vote fraud in Canada, but it isn't enough to sway more than a few thousand votes nationwide. A larger problem is that election-day workers are exhausted by the time they count the votes--they work a 14-hour day and are not allowed to leave their post for more than a few minutes. That's what scrutineers are for, but it's hard for the parties to get enough volunteers for the 40-50 polling stations per riding. All in all, ballot chicanery in Canada is trivial compared to the systemic electoral distortions I mentioned earlier.

Nov 3 update: Greg Palast, who wrote a book about vote theft in the 2004 Presidential election, just wrote an article describing the current state of American vote theft. Scary stuff.