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posted by n1 on Monday August 08 2016, @03:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the representation-is-a-privilege dept.

Ballot Access News reports:

On August 5, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer, a Bush Jr. appointee, ruled against Gary Johnson and Jill Stein in their debates lawsuit. The case had been filed on September 28, 2015, and is Johnson v Commission on Presidential Debates, U.S. District Court, D.C., 1:15cv-1580.

[...] The 27-page decision[Redirects to a PDF] [...] says, "Because Plaintiffs have no standing and because antitrust laws govern commercial markets and not political activity, those claims fail as a matter of well-established law."

[...] Footnote three, based on the judge's own research (or the research of her clerks), has factual errors. The judge relied on election returns published by the FEC, but the FEC returns do not say which candidates were [...] in states with a majority of electoral college votes, and the opinion's list of candidates is erroneous.

[...] Another factual error in the decision is on page 21. The decision says Ralph Forbes, an independent candidate for U.S. Senate, lost a case over debates in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1998. Actually Forbes was a candidate for U.S. House.

In the comments, Richard Winger notes a similar case.

the lawsuit Level the Playing Field v FEC is still pending, before another judge, in the same court

The presidential debates were previously moderated by the League of Women Voters (1976, 1980, 1984). The Democrats and Republicans screwed things up in 1988. The Commission on Presidential Debates, a corporation controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties, has run each of the presidential debates held since 1988.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by number11 on Monday August 08 2016, @07:02AM

    by number11 (1170) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 08 2016, @07:02AM (#385210)

    Voters can make a difference. Corporate influence is strong, but if enough voters got together, change could happen. Unless you truly believe Mr. Trump that the entire system is "rigged" from the top down. I think there's all sorts of corruption, but I don't think the major parties have that much power yet to rig an election however they want, regardless of whether votes turn out in droves to oppose the "corporate" candidate(s).

    Corporate power, however, is based on control of the media. Voters make choices from the choices that are presented to them. Part of that control is ideological (with Fox, explicitly so, but the other media are not unmindful of who owns them and what the editors will approve). A lot of that control is economic. It's enormously expensive to produce and place TV ads. And as much as they claim there is an impenetrable wall between the ad sales people and the editorial people, we all know that's BS. Part of it is simply that head to head competition (a horse race) makes a punchier story than one that's "on the one hand, on the other hand, on the third hand". The Internet reduces the expense of placing ads, but voters still have to find out about other options and overcome the media bias that there are only two choices.

    I would suggest that Mr. Trump is sort of right, it is in fact rigged. But not against him (what counts against him is that he's a bully and an asshat with a thin skin and an enormous ego). It's rigged (by both Republicans and Democrats) against the competition, intruder third parties.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by julian on Monday August 08 2016, @05:50PM

    by julian (6003) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 08 2016, @05:50PM (#385386)

    It's rigged (by both Republicans and Democrats) against the competition, intruder third parties.

    It's even rigged against members of their own parties who are even slightly divergent from the established norms. If the DNC hadn't been putting their finger on the scale Sanders might have gotten the nomination. It's possible Clinton still would have won but the fact that they felt the need to cheat is telling. You don't break the rules if you're already confident you're going to win.

    Still, the nomination process is political, and the DNC rewards loyalty and seniority more than popularity and ideology. Sanders understands the game and made the right choice backing Clinton. Defeating Trump really is the most important thing right now. The world can survive Hillary; she'll be another mediocre pro-business centrist like Obama. The Democrats of today are the conservative party. The GOP has become a tangled Venn diagram coalition of dominionists, white nationalists, social conservative authoritarians, tax protesters, and science deniers.

    Trump could end up being our last president if he gets elected. We can always try to do better next time, as long as there is a next time. Clinton can get us there, Trump won't.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @04:31AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @04:31AM (#385625)

      Defeating Trump really is the most important thing right now.

      This sounds familiar. This sounds like the same short-sighted bullshit that we hear every single election. The rabid, moronic partisans just can't help but vote for evil scumbags while using arguments that have been debunked a billion times to justify doing so. Voting for 'the lesser evil' has gotten us to this point, so we have people who do so to thank for Trump and Hillary. And it will only get worse from here.

      • (Score: 2) by julian on Tuesday August 09 2016, @11:57PM

        by julian (6003) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 09 2016, @11:57PM (#386041)

        First of all I don't think Hillary is evil or even a bad choice, she's just not a good one. Sanders was. Hillary is not going to move the needle much in either direction--partially because she's a centre-right neocon with some socially progressive positions, and partially because she's reviled by a portion of the Right as the avatar of Satan. They'd sooner commit ritual suicide in the Congressional chamber than let her appoint even a single judge. She'd have a years long congressional fight to get a new public park built in DC. Anything more substantial than that isn't happening.

        On the other side you have Trump, who really is country-ruiningly awful. There's never been in our nation's history a person less qualified that's gotten this close. His Presidency would be a disaster on any and all metric you could choose. Even his supporters would suffer such that they'd be forced to admit this in the end.

        So the choice is not the lesser of two evils. The choice amounts to the equivalent of a third term for Obama, or facing the prospects of total socioeconomic collapse if we're lucky, or full blown internecine "Civil War 2.0" if we are not.

        What an easy choice that is.