WaPo: Libertarians, Greens ready lawsuit against Commission on Presidential Debates

[portlander23]

Libertarians, Greens ready lawsuit against Commission on Presidential Debates

The Libertarian Party and Green Party and their 2012 candidates for president are readying a legal complaint against the Commission on Presidential Debates, hoping that a new legal argument -- an anti-trust argument -- will break the "duopoly" that's dominated the stage.

The legal complaint, which was sent early to The Washington Post, argues that a "cognizable political campaign market" is being corrupted by the commission's rules. The commission, a private entity set up after the League of Women Voters' 1992 debates allowed third party candidate Ross Perot to participate, has withstood yearly assaults from the likes of Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, and former Congressman Bob Barr. None of them have gotten past a 1999 commission rule: No candidate gets onstage unless he or she is polling at 15 percent or better.

I'm sure this is probably not a popular sentiment here, but I support this and I wish the Democratic Party would do more to make the process more inclusive.

I'm sensitive to the spoiler argument, but I come down more on the side that the party shouldn't be afraid to test its positions against all challengers and should fix a broken system rather than block candidates. The Commission on Presidential Debates is highly undemocratic, and we were better off when the League of Women Voters ran the show.

Most probably don't recall, but when electronic voting machines potentially (we may never know) stole the election for Bush in 2004, it was the Green and Libertarian parties that demanded every vote be counted, not the Democratic party.

[liberal_at_heart]

1. Glad to see them doing this. We need to take back our democracy.

The two parties are turning our democracy into a plutocracy.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Too bad that doesn't apply to the general.

Trump and Carson would be up there alone, heh.

[libodem]

3. It's become a one party system in many ways

Republican and republican-lite.

We need a grassroots Revolution. People Power!

[struggle4progress]

4. Neither party has by any measure any significant support in the US

Their combined strength is less than a million registered voters

Their combined number of current local office-holders is at most a few hundred: there doesn't seem to be one city in the country enamored of their ideas

Neither party seems to have anyone in Congress

Neither ever gets more than about 1% of the vote in a national election

The problem isn't that they aren't able to appear in the Presidential debate

[MohRokTah]

5. Same shit every four years.

It only ever amounted to anything with Perot.

There is no reason to allow the nutball candidates from the Libertarian and Green parties into the debates.

[Jim Lane]

6. Would you admit ALL challengers?

You write that you "come down more on the side that the party shouldn't be afraid to test its positions against all challengers...."

In 2012 there were, by my count, 28 different candidates who received votes (that's my count of the table on page 5 of the FEC report). So, would you favor a debate that included all 26 no-hopers? If every candidate got equal time in the debate, that would mean that more than 55 minutes out of every hour would be diverted to people who have no chance of becoming President. (Actually, let's use dynamic scoring: A rule requiring all candidates to be admitted would result in many more people becoming candidates so they could push their causes. But even at 28 candidates, it's ridiculous.)

The linked article doesn't make clear what rule the plaintiffs want to see applied. If they don't want a 28-person debate, then they must admit the need for some cutoff, and they're just arguing for lowering it to accommodate them.

It would serve the dimwitted Greens right if a Democratic-leaning judge announced the Two Commas Rule. Any party that got at least a million votes last time gets to have its nominee in the debates this time. Libertarians in, Greens out, and that would probably help the Democrats because the Libertarians would draw more votes from the Republicans.

Of course, there's no legal basis for a judge to impose the Two Commas Rule or to require a lower percentage of poll support or anything like that. I predict that the plaintiffs will lose.

[pnwmom]

7. The Libertarians and the Greens can debate each other.

But the Greens aren't Democrats, so what is their legal argument for participating in the Democratic debate?