SALEM (AP) - The Oregon Supreme Court knocked Ralph Nader from the Oregon presidential ballot, but the consumer advocate said he will take his case to the highest court in the land.

The court unanimously upheld a ruling by Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, who determined that errors on petition sheets left the independent presidential candidate 218 signatures short of the 15,306 needed to put him on the Nov. 2 ballot.

Marion County Judge Paul Lipscomb, in a decision earlier this month, faulted Bradbury, a Democrat, for using unwritten rules to decide the validity of the petitions. The Oregon high court, however, said Bradbury acted within his power and Lipscomb's concerns "were not well taken."

Though Bradbury's office used some unwritten procedures, "that does not render them unlawful," the court said Wednesday, adding that the procedures "are nothing more than the step-by-step process by which the secretary of state carried out legal authority."

Nader said the decision would be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"This is a sad day for democracy in America," he said in a statement issued after the ruling.

"It is evident that our independent presidential campaign has greatly stressed a corrupt exclusionary system and that the Democratic Party will stop at nothing to deny voters the opportunity to vote for our candidacy."

The ruling came on the day that counties had said was the practical deadline to start printing 1.9 million ballots for the all-mail election.

Bradbury spokeswoman Anne Martens said county officials would be told to go ahead with the printing.

Neel Pender, executive director of the Oregon Democratic Party, called the Supreme Court decision "a just end for an embarrassing charade for Ralph Nader.

"He's made an all-out, desperate attempt to disrupt this election in collusion with the Republicans," Pender said.

Oregon Republican Party Chairman Kevin Mannix said some individual Republicans assisted the Nader petitioning drive, but it was not a coordinated effort of either the party or the Bush-Cheney campaign.

"I don't think it will have a significant impact on the presidential contest because such a small number of voters were looking at voting for Ralph Nader," he said.

He criticized the state Supreme Court for a decision he said will affect citizen participation in the democratic process.

"They are empowering the secretary of state to disenfranchise voters on truly trivial technical grounds."

The ruling was the latest, and perhaps last, action in a long struggle by Nader to get on the ballot in the state where he drew 5 percent of the vote as the Pacific Green Party nominee in 2000.

He held two mini-conventions in Portland earlier this year but failed at each to draw the necessary 1,000 voter signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Backers then turned to the statewide petitioning option and turned in more than 18,000 signatures. Bradbury disqualified thousands of signatures on grounds they didn't conform to technical rules, such as circulators having properly signed each sheet.

Nader backers accused Bradbury, a Kerry supporter, of acting from partisanship and using trivial concerns to keep Nader off the ballot. They said Democrats fear that Nader could draw votes from John Kerry.

"People will say whatever they are going to say, but I am committed to enforcing the law," Bradbury said after the court ruling. "The Nader petitions had a whole lot of problems, and I needed to follow the law. That's not partisanship."

Recent polls indicate that fewer than 2 percent of Oregon voters support Nader in this election. He is on the ballot in more in more than 30 states and is suing for ballot access in several others.

Oregon voters will have five choices for president if Nader remains off the ballot.

Besides Kerry and President Bush, candidates qualifying earlier were David Cobb, Pacific Green Party; Michael Anthony Peroutka, Constitution Party, and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party.