Note especially the -- If more than two candidates wind up running, each voter will be asked to list all the candidates in order of preference. --- sentence ---------- Winning the Reform Party's Nomination Is Not Simple By DENNIS FARNEY Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL October 26, 1999 Strange things kept befalling Dick Lamm as he fought a losing fight against Ross Perot for the 1996 Reform Party presidential nomination. At one point, the former Colorado governor couldn't get his hands on a Reform Party ballot so that he could vote for himself. Meanwhile, other people around the country were receiving more ballots than they could handle. "I personally got seven," recalls Phil Madsen, a party founder in Minnesota. "There was nothing to prevent me from voting seven times." When Mr. Lamm tried to get a copy of the party mailing list, the party wouldn't let him have one. "To put it mildly, it was a rigged process," charges Lamm campaign manager Tom D'Amore Jr. But things will work better this time around, won't they? Don't bet on it, says Mr. D'Amore. Now, Donald Trump and Patrick Buchanan have left the Republican Party and set their sights on the 2000 nomination -- Mr. Buchanan with a fiery attack Monday on "the money boys and the Beltway elites" and a vow to beat them with what he called his "peasant army." And so, the Reform Party begins anew a gigantic, convoluted experiment in cyberdemocracy. Even if everything in this race goes by the book, the book itself charts a bizarre nomination process. There are multiple ways a person can vote in the party's presidential primary: by Internet, by phone, by mail or in person. If more than two candidates wind up running, each voter will be asked to list all the candidates in order of preference. There will be a national convention. But because the votes already will have been tabulated then, the results of the presidential race will almost certainly be known, at least to party insiders, before the first state delegation even casts its vote. Not to worry, party officials say: It's all computerized. "You hear scare stories of convicts, insane people and 12-year-olds voting. That's not going to happen," says party spokeswoman Donna Donovan. "There are checks and balances" -- among them Personal Identification Numbers to prevent double or multiple voting. Finally, she notes, the convention has a "fail-safe" mechanism: If delegates believe that the voting has been fraudulent, they can overturn the results by a two-thirds vote. "I don't see risks" in the nomination process, says outgoing party Chairman Russell Verney. "I see genius in it." Collecting Signatures The genius, as Mr. Verney sees it, is that the process compels would-be nominees to expand the party in the process of seeking the party's nomination. It does this by giving them a big incentive to petition their way onto the ballot, as a Reform Party candidate, in the 29 states and the District of Columbia where the Reform Party isn't yet guaranteed a spot on the 2000 general election ballot. The incentive is that each qualified voter that candidates sign up will then be entitled to vote in the Reform Party presidential primary and, presumably, will vote for them. "The party, as it has been built so far, has a replacement value of about $6 million dollars," Mr. Verney figures. "If somebody wants the nomination, they're going to have to bring something to the table." In fact, they might have to bring quite a bit to the table. Because getting those signatures could cost big money -- maybe another $6 million or so. Why? Because it isn't enough to rely upon idealistic volunteers when mounting a petition drive of this magnitude. Rather, candidates usually must also turn to professional signature-gathering organizations, which pound the pavements for a fee. "Two dollars a signature is the going rate," says Roger Stone, the political consultant who has directed New York developer Mr. Trump's presidential exploratory campaign. "But if there's competition, that could drive the cost up to $4 or $5 a signature. Getting on the ballot in those 29 states could cost $6 to $8 million." That kind of money is pocket change for Mr. Trump, but it could be a daunting obstacle for Mr. Buchanan. "I don't think Pat's got the table stakes," Mr. Stone says. Whither Perot? There is another man for whom money is no object: billionaire Ross Perot, the founder of the party. One conspiracy theory has the mercurial Mr. Perot doing the same thing he did in 1996 -- jumping into the race himself. The chances of this happening? "About 105%," ventures Mr. D'Amore, the Lamm campaign manager. Mr. Lamm also fears the worst. In 1996, "they said it was going to be an open process, I talked with Ross Perot and he assured me it was going to be an open process, but it was in no way an open process," Mr. Lamm says. "I should have seen it coming." Further complicating matters this time is the wild card of Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, who favors Mr. Trump. In the 1996 process, Mr. Perot portrayed himself as a white knight riding in to save the party from chaos. Next July 2, the party's presidential nominating committee announces which candidates have qualified for the presidential primary by collecting signatures. The minimum requirement is that a candidate get on the ballots of enough states to comprise at least a majority of the electoral votes of the 29 states. (Each state has different requirements. Some states won't have closed their ballot-access process by then; for those states, the nominating committee will rule on which candidates are making a good-faith effort.) Then, sometime between July 4 and the August convention in Long Beach, Calif., the presidential primary will be held. There are three ways voters can qualify to participate in the primary: By signing a candidate's petition, by being certified as a party member by the state party, or by simply asking their state party for permission to participate. Tabulating Primary Results The results are then tabulated by computer. "It's a very simple computer program, a simple spreadsheet," says Michael Farris, its designer and a Reform Party activist since 1993. A big-name accounting firm will be asked to oversee the operation. Still, he adds, "I'm going to be sweating and having ulcers all the way to the convention." An obvious ulcer-producing situation occurs if more than two candidates run, and no candidate receives a majority in the first round of voting. Mr. Farris, dubbed "the guru" of the process by party insiders, explains what would happen next: Assume, for simplicity's sake, a race of three candidates: A, B and C. In the first round of voting, C receives the smallest number of first-choice votes; thus C is forced to drop out. The computer then takes a look at whom C's voters picked as their second choices. These second-choice votes are added to the votes A and B already have. By definition, this results in a majority for one or the other. "Third-choice votes would come into play only if there are four candidates," Mr. Farris says. If only to make the convention more interesting, the vice-presidential candidate is nominated and chosen a different way: by the delegates themselves. As for deciding who is entitled to become a delegate, well, that's a story in itself. "Each state Reform Party has its own rules for selecting delegates," explains Pat Benjamin, the current vice chairman. Sound complicated? Not really, Reform Party officials maintain. "You should see the rules the Democrats have," spokeswoman Ms. Donovan says.
