Letters: One Reader's View

It is unfortunate that Pennsylvania Democratic Party spokesman Abe Amoros used the criminal indictment of 12 prominent Pennsylvania Democrats as an occasion, once again, to defame 2004 independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and 2006 Green Party senatorial candidate Carl Romanelli ("National tie to Pa. bonus scandal," July 15).

As Amoros should know, only a tiny number of signatures on the Nader petitions - 687 or 1.3 percent of the total - were counted as "forgeries" by their signers, and in the words of Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Thomas Saylor, there is "no evidence" to support Democrats' claims that the Nader campaign was even aware of such signatures. Furthermore, no allegation of fraud was ever raised against Romanelli's petitions.

There is, however, evidence that the Nader petitions were the target of widespread and deliberate sabotage: specifically, petition circulators discovered and removed about 7,000 obviously fake signatures prior to submitting the petitions.

Attorney General Tom Corbett should make it a priority to discover who was behind this unlawful conduct, and to clarify the role of the law firm mentioned in the indictment, which helped perpetrate the miscarriage of justice that denied Pennsylvanians their free choice of candidates in the 2004 presidential election.

Oliver Hall

Counsel to Ralph Nader

Washington