US Greens fail in bid to help GOP

Some of us have always regarded with some suspicion the way in which the Greens seem to have a habit of choosing to run candidates in narrowly Labour-held council wards.

In the US, the links between the Greens and the Republicans are blatant, as this news today shows:

"SANTORUM-FUNDED GREEN PARTY CANDIDATE FOR U.S. SENATE THROWN OFF BALLOT

Commonwealth Court Judge James R. Kelley has ordered the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate to be removed from the ballot because the party did not have enough valid signatures in its nominating petitions.

Carl Romanelli's bid was backed by Rick Santorum [extremely right wing senator for Pennsylvania], who hoped that Romanelli could siphon votes from Bob Casey. Recent polling has shown Romanelli receiving between 3-5% favorability.

Romanelli admitted that Republican donors, including many of Santorum's donors, provided most of the $100,000 he spent collecting the signatures required to be on the ballot. Judge Kelley has ruled that he ended up 8,931 signatures shy of 67,070 he needed to qualify as a minor-party candidate.

The Pennsylvania Democratic Party filed the lawsuit that spawned a six-week review of about 3/4 of the 94,000 signatures gathered, saying they included fake names, unregistered voters and illegible signatures.

Pennsylvania law requires minor-party and independent candidates to collect a number of signatures equal to 2 percent of the ballots cast for the largest vote-getter in the last statewide election. This year's threshold, because it is based on Casey's record vote count in winning the treasurer's office in 2004, was set at an unusually high number.

Romanelli has released a statement saying that he will challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court."

Makes one wonder whether Nader's 2000 Green presidential bid, the net result of which was Al Gore losing to George W, was as straightforward as it looked.