Andy Bromage Photo

Nader's campaigners: Christina Tobin and Ralph Ferucci deliver petitions to Hartford, in 169 different sections.

Vic Lancia's phone rang. It was Ralph Nader asking for help gathering signatures to get him on the presidential ballot in Connecticut.

Lancia, a loyal foot soldier for third party political campaigns, didn't believe it was Nader. He hung up. Nader called back. Lancia still didn't believe him. "Stop fucking with me," Lancia said, and hung up again.

So Nader called Ken Krayeske, who's running his state campaign. "What are you doing giving me a guy who hangs up the phone on me?" Nader asked. Krayeske made a quick phone call to explain, and before long Lancia was outside a Middletown supermarket sweet-talking shoppers into signing for Nader.

The Nader campaign submitted 17,000 signatures to state election officials in Hartford last week—twice the number needed to secure a line on the ballot this fall—but they didn't do it alone. Nader had help petitioning from Libertarians and the Greens, who in turn got help from Nader.

In a rare show of third party unity, the campaigns of Nader, Libertarian Bob Barr and the Green Party's Cynthia McKinney, the last two former Congress members, are joining forces across state lines to overcome ballot access rules designed to keep minor party candidates out. The camps are sharing workers, swapping petitions and urging voters to sign up for another third party candidate along with their own. They've teamed up in Maine, West Virginia, Hawaii, Pennsylvania and now Connecticut, where Barr submitted 13,000 signatures and McKinney turned in "close to the necessary number," a Green Party boss says.

Libertarian petitioners were instrumental in getting Nader on the ballot in the all-important state of Pennsylvania last month, so Nader's team repaid the favor in Connecticut, dispatching his clipboard-equipped raiders on sidewalks and town greens. Not because the campaign especially loves Bob Barr, though.

"I couldn't care less about Libertarians," says Krayeske. "The hurdles to democracy that the two parties put out in front of you are so onerous that third parties are learning to cooperate."

Sidewalk petitioning can be thankless work: Campaigns pay workers $1 to $1.50 per signature to stand on baking asphalt, asking irritated grocery shoppers to sign in support of a candidate they've often never heard of, or might consider a "spoiler." Nader's national ballot coordinator, Christina Tobin of Illinois, arrived in Hartford last week to turn in the fruits of their labor.

In true Nader fashion, Tobin used the occasion to agitate rather than celebrate, telling reporters that petitioning onto Connecticut's ballot is a "tedious" and "ridiculous" process designed to "make our lives more difficult." For example: State law requires petitions be certified by local officials in Connecticut's 169 towns, even though federal law requires states maintain a centralized list of all registered voters.

That means petitioners must carry a form for every town—Andover to Woodstock—which the state then mails to those towns. Another law says petitioners must be state residents, which poses a problem because the most reliable workers are the national staffers who travel from state to state, not local volunteers. Beyond that, requiring 7,500 valid signatures when other New England states require a fraction as many (1,000 in Rhode Island, 3,000 in New Hampshire) disadvantages small-dollar grassroots campaigns, Tobin says.

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, the state's top election official, is unsympathetic. She says town officials must validate petition signatures because only they have the original signed voter cards. If something looks suspicious—say, several signatures in the same handwriting—officials need to check the source documents.

On requiring circulators to be state residents, Bysiewicz says it's perfectly reasonable. "You ought to be able to have support in the state you're running in if you are going to have a real candidacy," Bysiewicz says. But third party campaigns are modest endeavors, often relying on a few dedicated staffers to do heavy lifting over huge geographic areas. Besides, can't voters just register their support at the polls? Is luring state residents away from their jobs to spend a full day collecting signatures for $1 a pop the only way to demonstrate ballot-worthy support?

Bysiewicz is unmoved. "You ought to have people in the state willing to go out and get petition signatures."

Mike DeRosa, the state Green Party chair, disagrees. "Not everyone can just go out and petition. Some people are too shy. The two major parties will create all kinds of barriers to full participation in the political process."

abromage@newhavenadvocate.com