By Michael Peltier
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Reuters) - A Florida judge ordered county elections officials on Wednesday to issue absentee ballots without the name of independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader, a possible blow to President Bush in the battleground state.
Circuit Judge Kevin Davey overruled a move this week by Florida's elections supervisor to include Nader on the ballot for the Nov. 2 election as a Reform Party candidate.
Nader was a candidate in 2000 when Bush won Florida by 537 votes to clinch the White House. Analysts said most of Nader's nearly 98,000 votes in Florida would have gone to Democrat Al Gore had Nader not been on the ballot.
A poll released on Aug. 30 by the Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times showed Bush leading Democrat John Kerry in Florida by 48 percent to 46 percent, with Nader at 2 percent. The poll surveyed 800 voters from Aug. 22 to 25.
Davey issued a temporary injunction last week preventing the state from putting Nader on the ballot, siding with a Democratic challenge that the Reform Party did not qualify as a national party under state law.
On Monday, Division of Elections Director Dawn Roberts told Florida's 67 county voting supervisors to put Nader's name on overseas absentee ballots that must be sent out by Saturday.
Roberts said Hurricane Ivan, set to strike the U.S. Gulf coast, had cast doubt on whether Davey could hold a hearing on a permanent injunction scheduled for Wednesday. As a result, she said, Florida's Department of State filed an appeal against the temporary injunction.
The appeal automatically stayed the injunction, allowing Roberts to certify Nader as a legitimate candidate and the counties to put his name on the ballots.
Davey on Wednesday overrode that stay and said that if counties had already sent out ballots with Nader's name on them, they must send corrected versions without it.
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http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=V05UDCBAXMBQACRBAELCFEY?type=topNews&storyID=6246565--------------------------------------------------
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