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Nader didn't meet the standards in Pennsylvania just like any Pennsylvania State Trooper can look at your car and find a reason to ticket you for it. In this case they first said that Nader couldn't run as an Independent because he was nominated by the Reform Party. When that didn't work, they turned to examining every one of his 30,000 signatures and threw out enough of them to reject him (he probably needed 24,000). This happens because the ballot petitions are completely unreasonable, and your signature is rejected if you put down your mailing address instead of your polling location... something 75% of signatories generally do unless carefully watched and questionned.
In 1996 we had a whole set of petitions rejected because the notary who notarized them remembered to post them and stamp them and sign them but had forgotten to use her raised seal.
The whole process is a total fucking nightmare of potholes and bureaucracy, and both sides use this as part of the process of denying candidates access to the ballot. It is absolutely indefensible behavior by the parties. And voters know that if it looks like a fix, it probably is. You can talk all you want about how voters are systematically denied access to vote. But those of us who've had candidates denied ballot access know that's a huge fucking sham because hundreds of thousands of voters didn't even have their choice listed and that made you happy.
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