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Judge: 3rd Parties Not Allowed in Presidential Debates

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

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

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.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @06:27AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @06:27AM (#385659)

    E.g. "A well organized militia" doesn't either say or imply anything about the government either controlling or approving of that militia

    Article I, Section 8

    The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
    ...
    To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

    To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

    To provide and maintain a Navy;

    Combine this with Amendment 10

    The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

    And we see that the militias are to be firmly under state control, except for the navy which is approved full-term as a federal military, and the federal government can take the militias from the states and make them the federal army for no longer than two years.