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Nader primary vote challenged
A sharp conflict has arisen among leading Green-Rainbow activists over the results of the Party's presidential primary. At stake is allocation of the state's delegates to the 2008 Green Party presidential nominating convention.
All candidates on the 2008 presidential primary ballot for the Green-Rainbow Party (GRP) may have won enough votes to send delegates to the Green Party’s national nominating convention.
There were six names on the ballot: Jared Ball (NJ), Elaine Brown (GA), Cynthia McKinney (GA/CA), Kent Mesplay (CA), Ralph Nader (DC), and Kat Swift (TX).
On March 7, Secretary of State Galvin released the official results of the February 5 primary:
• Ralph Nader—744 (39.9%) • Cynthia McKinney—474 (25.4%) • No Preference—194 (10.4%) • Kat Swift—60 (3.2%) • Jared Ball—42 (2.3%) • Kent Mesplay—39 (2.1%) • Elaine Brown—38 (2.0%) • Write-ins—273 (14.6%) • Vote Total (including blanks)—1941
Candidates Ball and Brown retained some support despite dropping out before the primary. Candidate Jessie Johnson (WV) was not on the Massachusetts ballot, although he says he wanted to be.
Nader and McKinney were easily the number one and two choices of GRP primary voters.
On February 28 several prominent GRP members, including 2006 statewide candidates Grace Ross, Martina Robinson, and Jamie O'Keefe, signed a Minority Opinion asking that GRP set the Nader vote aside because Nader had not formally sought the Green nomination.
Ross and some of the other signers have campaigned for McKinney; other leading GRP McKinney supporters declined to sign this document.
The signers expressed regret that “a collateral effect will be to decrease the number of delegates allocated to Ralph Nader… [which might] be experienced as retroactively disenfranchising those persons who voted for Mr. Nader.…”
But they believed that “the ability to make informed choices as a voter outweighs” such factors. They refer to the fact that Nader is not actively seeking the Green Party nomination.
This position was not endorsed by either of the GRP Co-Chairs, by any GRP elected public official, or by any member of MRGRA, the Mystic River GRP local which sponsors The Bridge.
In a sharp March 9 response , GRP Co-Chairs Merelice (Norfolk County) and Nat Fortune (Franklin County) "recommend that the Party stand by its approved delegate selection plan, reject attempts to circumvent election laws, resist attempts to attack particular candidates through manipulation of Party committees, and deplore the instigation of legal attacks upon the Party, its committees, and its officers."