[Nader]said that while representatives of an antitax group encouraged Republicans to attend a meeting last Saturday in Portland, Ore., to help him collect 1,000 signatures, he said Democrats were “infiltrating” the same meeting merely to block other supporters from getting in.
Mr. Nader said Democrats crowded into a meeting hall, kept other people out and gave the false impression that they had signed petitions for him. Democratic officials did not dispute Mr. Nader’s account. “I felt it as my obligation due to the dirty tricks that the far right were doing to stack the seats at that convention,” said Moses Ross, communications secretary for the Multnomah County Democratic Party. “I felt obliged to encourage our Democrats to do something about that.”
So let’s see. Republicans want Nader on the ballot to take votes from Kerry, so they go to a meeting to sign petitions for him. Sneaky, yes, but not interfering with anyone else’s rights. The Democrats respond by flooding the meeting room to prevent both Republicans and anyone else from signing the petitions. This strikes me as beyond the ethical (and, depending on the details of “kept people out,” perhaps legal) pale, as it prevented others from exercising their constitutional right to assemble, and was intended to do so. Someone, at the very least, owes Mr. Nader and his supporters and apology.
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