Jennifer Harper at The Washington Times has written this article about the Libertarian Party’s involvement in the Our America Initiative lawsuit over the CPD’s rules for presidential debate inclusion. The article also mentions the Green Party’s involvement, as well as the 2012 Free & Equal debate featuring Rocky Anderson, Virgil Goode, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein. An excerpt:
Independent and third party candidates have yet to stand on flashy podiums of officially sanctioned presidential debates. Now the Libertarian Party is pushing back. Fed up with ongoing exclusion and the valuable national exposure that is beyond their reach, the Libertarians have launched a lawsuit against the “duopoly” of Republican and Democratic candidates who have a guaranteed national forum – when alternative candidates do not.
“Most Americans have no idea that the official-sounding and acting Commission on Presidential Debates is, in reality, a private organization created by the Republican and Democrat Parties and funded by special interests whose goal is to protect the status quo,” the Libertarian Party says in its mission statement. “Thus, it is no surprise that the Debate Commission has adopted ‘rules’ that make it virtually impossible for independent or third-party candidates to ever participate in the all-important presidential debates.”
The rules? To qualify, candidates must garner at least 15 percent of national voter support in national surveys – though the Libertarians say these surveys are “arbitrarily selected.” They also call this requirement “unfair and illegal,” and contend that any candidate who is qualified to be president under the Constitution and has qualified for enough states’ ballots to receive at least 50 percent of Electoral College votes should be included.
Read the full article here.
Well as much as OAI, Gary Johnson, etc. talk about it, you’d swear it has been.
The article is misleading. It implies the lawsuit has already been filed. It has not been filed.