It was the answer. The judge ruled that Keyes had no standing to sue.
Try reading your part and then the following paragraphs...which contain the Judge's opinion about the question that he set up.
I did. And in the following paragraphs Judge Carter states that candidate are the only ones who potentially satisfy the injury in fact requirement. There is nothing new in that, other cases have made the same finding. But he is also clear, in his comments prior to and after dismissing Keyes, that the definition of which candidates can establish standing is not all encompassing. He indicates that any write-in candidate does not. Obviously Keyes did not, due to the sheer improbability of his winning. Judge Carter basically leaves the question of which candidates qualify for standing undefined and turns to the question of whether the Court can provide redress for whatever candidate can show injury in fact. And it that Judge Carter found that the court could not.
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In addition, Defendants’ arguments raise obvious slippery slope objections.(All of your quotes excluded this KEY first sentence. Your purposeful exclusion of this first sentence is the reason why I'm calling you disingenuous. Everything that you've claimed are against Keyes are actually arguments against the slippery slope of excluding third party candidates. The paragraph has an entirely different meaning if you exclude this first sentence, as you have done several times.) Would a candidate such as Ross Perot, who received nearly twenty percent of the popular vote but no electoral college votes in the 1992 election, have a sufficiently strong chance of winning the election to establish standing to challenge a major party candidate’s qualifications? At the same time, if every candidate has standing to challenge an opposing candidate, would that include write-in candidates who receive minimal votes? Where to draw the line between which political candidates have standing and which candidates do not have standing to challenge their opposing candidates’ qualifications is an amorphous determination that would need to take into account, at the very least, the number of states in which the candidate was on the ballot.
The Court is troubled by the idea that a third party candidate would not have standing to challenge a major party candidate’s qualifications(I don't know how to make this any clearer. This immediately addresses the slippery slope points that the Judge discussed in the previous paragraph. You have to be dense as a rock to read this sentence and still argue that Keyes didn't have standing on the basis that he was a third party candidate), while the opposing major party candidate may be able to establish standing because he or she has a better chance of winning the election. Defendants’ argument encourages the marginalization of the voice of a third party in what is a dominantly two-party political system and would require the Court to pass judgment that Plaintiffs are such unlikely candidates that who they are running against would not make a difference. (The Judge just finished ripped apart the Defense's point that third party candidates don't have standing. Do you need further proof? The Judge continues: ) This argument also ignores the tremendous effect that a third-party candidate can have on the presidential election. In 2000, many political commentators opined that should Green Party candidate Ralph Nader not have run for presidential office and received less than three percent of the popular vote, Al Gore would have won the election instead of President George W. Bush. Even when third-party candidates themselves may not have a chance of winning, which candidates they compete against can certainly have an effect on the election results.