According to a release from Our America Initiative, the much promoted lawsuit against the Commission on Presidential Debates will be filed Tuesday.
LAWSUIT CHALLENGING COMMISSION ON PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES TO BE FILED TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, IN WASHINGTON, DC
What: On Tuesday, September 29, a lawsuit will be filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia charging that the exclusion of qualified candidates from the general election presidential debates by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) violates federal anti-trust laws.
When: 10:30 a.m., Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Where: United States District Court for the District of Columbia, 400 Constitution Avenue NW, DC.
Who: Bruce Fein, attorney representing the plaintiffs, will file the complaint, and will be available for interviews with the media outside the Courthouse.
Plaintiffs are: 2012 Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson; Jim Gray, 2012 Libertarian vice-presidential nominee; Jill Stein, 2012 Green Party presidential nominee; Cheri Honkala, 2012 Green Party vice-presidential nominee; the Libertarian National Committee, and the Green Party of the United States.
About: The lawsuit challenging the exclusion of candidates from CPD-sponsored debates is backed by the Our America Initiative, a not-for-profit advocacy organization, through the Fair Debates project, https://www.fairdebates.com. Former New Mexico Governor and 2012 presidential candidate Gary Johnson is the Honorary Chairman of the Our America Initiative.
Per Richard Winger at Ballot Access News, the Washington Post has obtained a copy of the complaint. David Weigel writes:
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.
Bruce Fein, the attorney for the new plaintiffs, argues over 43 pages that keeping them out of a “multi-billion dollar” market violates “antitrust laws, the First Amendment, and District of Columbia tort law.”
“The unlawful agreement among Defendants has several illicit purposes,” writes Fein. “The first is to acquire, maintain, and exercise duopoly control of the multi-million dollar market in organizing, promoting, sponsoring, and fundraising for holding national general election presidential and vice-presidential debates to artificially advantage the Democratic and Republican Party candidates… the second illicit purpose is to acquire, maintain, and exercise duopoly control over, and to exclude and severely undermine competition in, the multi-billion dollar market of organizing, promoting, fundraising for, and engaging in general presidential and vice-presidential election campaigns.”
Fein goes on to credit former Salt Lake City, UT mayor and 2012 Justice Party presidential candidate Rocky Anderson with the idea for the lawsuit. Anderson was originally slated to be part of the OAI legal team, but withdrew.
Bush and Clinton both insisted he be included.
My understanding is that the League of Women voters handled the debates until 1987. This is from the Wikipedia article on “United States presidential debates”, and includes a quote:
“Control of the presidential debates has been a ground of struggle for more than two decades. The role was filled by the nonpartisan League of Women Voters (LWV) civic organization in 1976, 1980 and 1984.[5] In 1987, the LWV withdrew from debate sponsorship, in protest of the major party candidates attempting to dictate nearly every aspect of how the debates were conducted. On October 2, 1988, the LWV’s 14 trustees voted unanimously to pull out of the debates, and on October 3 they issued a press release:[9]”
“”The League of Women Voters is withdrawing sponsorship of the presidential debates…because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. It has become clear to us that the candidates’ organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.””
Interestingly, in 1992 they couldn’t keep Ross Perot out of the debates.
Win or lose, the debate cartel/scam will get exposed more thanks to the lawsuit.
I hope they are not too late. Lawsuits take time. They might try for a “preliminary injunction”, but to get that usually requires that they will almost certainly win on the merits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preliminary_injunction
Perhaps the case should be based, in part, on the Sherman/Clayton anti-trust law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
It prohibits agreements restraining trade. Putting on the debate over a commercial network, restricting the number of debate participants, can probably be correctly labelled as “restraint of trade”.
I think the filings will be public. I know Nick read at least an initial version; not sure if he saw the latest.
Conspiracy is not an element of a Sherman Act violation.
We could start with the composition of the CoPD. The legal briefs will explain it.
Antitrust is an interesting angle, although it might be tough to prove. Wouldn’t they have to prove that there was a conspiracy to keep candidates out of debates? How would they do that?
Me too. Oh well, better late than never.
Both Rocky Anderson and Bruce Fein are to be commended for their contributions to this lawsuit.
I had personally hoped it would have been filed six months ago, but am glad to see OAI stepping up to the plate now.
http://debates.org/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=57&cntnt01origid=15&cntnt01detailtemplate=newspage&cntnt01returnid=80
“nonpartisan, nonprofit” LOL what BS
But now we have the dates and times and cities….
To start planning counter-protests, local awareness campaigns, pressure on the universities involved, etc.