TORT REFORM THIS!

You mean there's another lawsuit over the Nov. 2 election?

Well, that makes it official. There's been more litigation surrounding
the 2004 election than over the Corvair, Three Mile Island and breast
implants put together. Who cares if the Keep Our Doctors in Nevada
tort reform takes the money out of medical malpractice; there's always
the booming speciality of election law to make up for it.

By my count, there have been 12.2 million lawsuits filed thus far this
year, but I just made that number up, so don't go by me. But even if
I'm slightly undercounting, that's still a lot of litigation.

The people who want to legalize marijuana sued when they forgot to
turn in 6,000 signatures, and county clerks rejected signatures of
brand new voters whose names hadn't made it to voting rolls yet, and
when they didn't get a registered voter to promise on an affidavit --
cross his heart and swear to die -- that all the signatures on all the
petitions were legit. Oh, and they sued to invalidate the rule that
says you have to gather signatures in 13 of the state's 17 counties,
too. In the end, they went 2-for-4: The affidavit requirement and the
13-county-rule got tossed, but they lost on including the forgotten
signatures and the new voters.

Nevadans for Sound Government sued when its petition gatherers were
harassed at government buildings. (Could it have been the flannel
shirts and axes?) They won. They sued when they failed to gather
enough valid signatures. They lost. Just in case they won, however,
the Nevada Taxpayers Association sued to prevent the measure from
ending up on the ballot. It turned out not be necessary.

The Nevada Democratic Party sued when independent presidential
candidate Ralph Nader got 11,800 signatures to appear on the November
ballot alongside big-leaguers George W. Bush and John F. Kerry. The
party lost. It appealed. It lost again. At last check, it was
contemplating its next move, said to possibly include the use of the
flying toasters screen saver to obscure Nader's name on electronic
ballots statewide.

Speaking of being on the ballot, at least three people successfully
sued claiming their opponents did not really live in the districts
they wanted to represent, resulting in some challengers getting tossed
before their names hit the ballot.

And the Nevada Trial Lawyers Association is suing the state, claiming
the language of the ballot arguments in favor of Keep Our Doctors in
Nevada is misleading, because there are plenty of doctors coming to
Nevada. They cite figures from the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners
that show the number of doctors has increased every year since 1999,
before the recent medical malpractice unpleasantness. If doctor's
aren't leaving, do they really need to be kept?

Doctors respond that in some cases, while there has been a net gain of
physicians, there is also an unmistakable exodus of doctors who have
left Nevada because of the crisis. At week's end, the Secretary of
State's office replied that the arguments were prepared by a committee
in accordance with the law, and the ballot should stand. (They do,
after all, have to get those things printed up by next week so U.S.
service members can have their chance to vote.)

Judging truth in political discourse is always a dicey project,
especially when neither side wants to give the other an inch of
advantage. But working to keep ideas off the ballot -- instead of
challenging those ideas with your own arguments -- seems downright
undemocratic.