Reform Party backers plan suit > Perot aide lambastes state’s petition check

AUGUSTA — Displaying the feistiness of their boss, organizers of the proposed Reform Party initiated by H. Ross Perot vowed Friday to launch a federal lawsuit against the state for denying the party a spot on the November ballot.

Maine Secretary of State Bill Diamond announced Thursday that the Reform Party’s efforts failed to meet ballot-access requirements.

State law required the proposed party to collect 25,565 valid signatures by Dec. 14. 1995. Although organizers submitted 34,921 signatures last month, Diamond ruled that only 25,050 of them were valid.

Most of the 9,871 disqualified signatures were not certified by local registrars of voters because those who signed the petition did not also enroll in the Reform Party.

During a State House press conference, Russ Verney, Perot’s national political director, said the lawsuit would charge that the state violated the due-process rights of the more than 30,000 residents who signed up for the party.

A sometimes indignant Verney told reporters that Diamond intentionally defrauded the group of its effort to appear on the ballot to maintain the status quo of the two major political parties.

“The tyranny of the minority … is being thrust on the citizens of Maine,” Verney said, adding that the number of petition signatures shows that Mainers are fed up with politics as usual.

Diamond said after the press conference that he was following the legal advice of Attorney General Drew Ketterer and that Verney’s charges of fraud were “ludicrous.”

“I don’t know where he’s coming from with that,” Diamond said of Verney’s allegations.

With enlarged copies of petitions and enrollment cards on tri-pods behind him, Verney claimed that at least 600 rejected signatures appear to be valid. An incomplete review of the petitions conducted by Citizens to Establish a Maine Reform Party, he said, showed that town clerks and state election officials rejected signatures for illegible handwriting, using “ditto” marks, and leaving out birthdates on the forms.

In Bangor alone, organizers said that they reviewed 160 rejected signatures with city officials and found that 93 were rejected for no apparent reason.

Similar cases were presented from collection drives in Portland, Biddeford, and Old Town. In Old Town, the group claimed in a Dec. 29 letter to Diamond, a number of signatures received after the Nov. 7 election are being held for processing during the Old Town Election Board’s next meeting, which is scheduled for Jan. 9, well past the state’s Dec. 14 deadline.

Those who signed up for the Reform Party, Diamond said, may now immediately re-enroll in another party.

Although the group threatened to fight Diamond’s ruling with a lawsuit, Diamond said that state law prohibits his office from reviewing the case again or reconsidering signatures that already have been invalidated.

The secretary of state also suggested that part of the problem might have been the speed with which the group tried to garner the signatures — most were collected in about three weeks.

But Verney said that despite the haste with which the process was completed, there was no excuse for local election officials allegedly making so many mistakes.

“If there was time enough to do the job wrong, there was time enough to do it right,” Verney said.

Candidates identifying themselves with the Reform Party still have a chance to be listed on general election ballots in November.