Two political lawsuits were filed yesterday, both of which were fairly predictable, but will nevertheless be worth watching.<\/p>\n
First, in Texas, a certain former consumer advocate was trying to qualify for the state’s presidential ballot as an independent. He tried to collect the necessary number of signatures, but failed. As a result, he did what any red-blooded American would do under the circumstances — he filed a lawsuit<\/a>.<\/p>\n Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader sued Texas’ top election official Monday to try to get onto the state’s ballot, claiming that a petition signature requirement is unconstitutional.<\/p>\n His lawsuit was filed in federal court in Austin only a couple of minutes before the court clerk’s office closed for the day.<\/p>\n Nader’s campaign submitted an application with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office for a place on the general election ballot but said it wouldn’t turn in the more than 50,000 voter signatures it had collected.<\/p>\n The campaign had to collect at least 64,076 signatures by 5 p.m. Monday from registered voters who did not vote in the Democratic or Republican primaries. That equals 1 percent of all votes cast for president in the last election in Texas.<\/p>\n The petition signature requirement and the 60-day timetable for collecting the signatures are “an unconstitutional and discriminatory burden as applied to Independent candidates in the State of Texas,” Nader’s campaign manager, Theresa Amato, wrote in a letter to Texas Secretary of State Geoffrey Connor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The suit might have a little more credibility if it was filed before<\/i> the campaign failed to meet the state’s standards. Nader’s staff knew the threshold, tried to meet it, but couldn’t generate the support. If this was really about the principle, and they recognized all along that the requirements were unfair, why not file the lawsuit before?<\/p>\n