This is another in a series of blog posts that show how the CNN debate criteria for the June 27, 2024 debate would have excluded popular minor party and independent candidates of the past. The print edition of Ballot Access News for June 26, 1996, shows that the Reform Party, or independent petitions supporting Ross Perot, had only been verified in states containing 226 electoral votes, short of the CNN requirement of 270 electoral votes.
Separate from that, even if the Reform Party, or independent Perot petitions, had reached 270, Perot still would not have met the CNN requirements because he was not yet the nominee of the Reform Party, and his nomination was contested. His opponent for the Reform nomination, former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm, was not defeated by Perot until the national party mail-in primary ballot on August.18, 1996.
Obsessed much?
Who watches CNN? It’s FAKE NEWS
Hey, if there was any chance of the FEC taking CNN to task, I’d be obsessing about it too. Unfortunately, I see approximately 0% chance that CNN will be held accountable under Biden, and less than 1% under Trump.
Someone has to make the point crystal clear for posterity about how rigged and likely illegal this “debate” is and how corrupt CNN and the two ruling party Establishments are for engaging in this. Given his historical knowledge, Richard Winger’s the person to do it. Who knows, perhaps these blog posts might read widely enough by people abroad, particularly in countries where multiparty systems and debates are the norm, and the myth that this country has free and fair elections is dispelled. That would give the two ruling parties quite the headache when it comes to foreign diplomacy, and we might see reforms as a result, much like how the civil rights movement of the 1960s won reforms. It’s a longshot, but still better than shrugging our shoulders and doing nothing in the face of such blatant corruption.
WILL OLDE TRUMP TRIP AND FALL ON OLDE BIDEN AND BOTH DIE —
FROM WORLD WIDE TV AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ???
I think there’s a 100% chance Trump will hold them to account when,not if, he’s President Again. The first term was just practice. The real Trump Presidency starts January 20. In fact, before it’s over on J20 2029, the courts will decide to give Trump a mulligan for that first term, extending his second term to J20 2033.
Elections have become too important to let people have choices.
What Comrade Ziobro said, but unironically, if he was being ironic.
Not directly on topic. Parking for safekeeping in case not accepted for publication elsewhere.
The unnamed poll likely based inclusion and exclusion on ballot access.
If the sponsors of whichever poll that was looked at recent past ballot access by party, or even current state verified access by party if ignoring such things as an as yet unknown number state parties not putting their national nominee on the ballot and the possibility of the national committee at some point rescinding the nomination, perhaps in time to impact state by state ballot access and perhaps not, it would make sense to include the Libertarian and Green party nominees, and exclude the other candidates you mentioned.
I don’t believe that’s a good approach this year, for reasons you partially hint at. My analysis of details – hopefully it will be accepted for Letter to the Editor publication this time:
Although he’s as yet certified on the ballot in few states, Kennedy is the best funded, most well covered by media in aggregate, and best polling in the polls which do include him independent or minor party candidate this year. He claims to have completed sufficient work to appear on state ballots for 310 electors, although most of those States have not yet certified acceptance that all the paperwork was indeed in order. This is according to
https://www.kennedy24.com/ballot-access.
That site doesn’t mention that, according to Georgia’s new law, if all those States were to certify him (if I counted states correctly), he’d additionally qualify in Georgia as well, without ballot access signature gathering or, to my knowledge, filing fees. It erroneously lists the prior Georgia law, requiring 7500 valid signatures of voters.
That campaign’s site says that every remaining state is at some unknown level of progress towards qualifying for the ballot, except two states where they are not yet allowed to start qualifying: Wisconsin, where they must gather 2,000 signatures of voters eligible to vote in that state starting a week from this Monday, and Louisiana, where they must pay a qualifying fee of $500 no earlier than July 16.
In DC, it says the window to qualify is not yet open, but also says it opened 8 days ago. It appears the website updates are less than perfect.
Given the internal issues of the Libertarian Party, it appears RFK JR will likely appear on more ballots than their nominee, even if the sole criterion for poll inclusion is ballot access, as appears to have been the case with the unnamed poll you mentioned.
Ballot access news, 2024.05 edition, says the Libertarian presidential nominee is on in 37 states, with several more in progress, and does not account for any dissenting state parties or the possibility of national committee rescinding nomination or passively withdrawing support in remaining states.
Wikipedia – I’ll refrain the temptation to editorial parody of their name – says 33 states for 337 electors certified, does not mention progress or lack thereof in additional states, does not say they failed in NY, mentions that MT and CO rejected the nomination for 14 electors, doesn’t say how many more State parties may reject, etc. It says Ohio, with 17 electors, is submitted but not yet certified.
The ballot access of the Green Party prospective nominee is not yet known. The May 2024 ballot access news says 21 states, with several more in progress. Wikipedia – I’ll refrain the temptation to editorial parody of their name – says 23 states for 279 electors certified,
one state for 3 electors being verified, and New York rejected.
To my knowledge, the Green Party does not have significant internal dissension which will jeopardise their existing ballot lines accepting their nominee or party unity among the national and state parties in helping her get on the ballot in additional states. One source, a disgruntled former Green Party member who comments at BAN and IPR frequently, says their enthusiasm level is low. I don’t know any loyal Greens to tell me otherwise.
The ballot access news information was likely compiled in late April, as it shows Kennedy completed petitions in three states and working on many more. WP says certified in 10 states with 149 electors, awaiting certification in 13 states with 174 electors, disputed in one state with 6 electors (329 electors between the three, beating the campaigns own count of 310, but like the campaign, not taking into account the new Georgia law). We have 16 in GEORGIA, which would make that 345. KENNEDY has the only campaign outside the majors with a real shot at 50 plus DC this year. I think they’ll make it.
The nearly two Month old BAN information shows the constitution party nominee on the ballot in 12 states, with progress in several more. WP says 11 states with 104 electors, awaiting certification in 2 states with 19 electors, and progress towards ballot access is not tracked at WP (BAN Subscribers will get the latest on that in a few days).
Given that the CP nomination was iirc in late April and hotly contested, it stands to reason that the bulk of their ballot access work didn’t start earlier, but is not yet certified in some states or completed in others. I may be overly optimistic, but I share the Constitution Party nominee’s optimism that, like Kennedy, he will be on the ballot in more states than the Libertarian Party’s nominee or the Green Party’s nominee this year.
I readily acknowledge this hasn’t been the case in other recent presidential elections, so the unnamed poll is justified in its exclusion if, as I suspect, it’s on the basis of ballot access. However, the Libertarians are in turmoil this year, the Greens might possibly face exhaustion with a third time retread who jumped in only when Dr. West abandoned them for an independent run, while the Constitution Party is on the rebound, with a well known outside the party nominee whose campaign is reportedly raising millions from outside sources.
As for Dr. West, that nearly 2 Months old BAN info had him on in 6 states with very little progress in additional states, wiki says 6 states for 39 electors and awaiting certification in 2 more with 31, and as mentioned, does not track progress of petitions and other ways of getting on the ballot underway.
Ballot Access News doesn’t track additional ballot access in their chart, you didn’t name them in your comment, and no poll I know of has included them, but there are 5 presidential tickets on the ballot in 1-3 states for 6-23 electors each. None are shown awaiting verification anywhere. All other POTUS campaigns have no ballot access anywhere.
I refrained from including registered write ins. Some states require them to register, others do not.
More parking for safekeeping:
Thank you, Mr. Perry. Notably, Mr. Oliver is the lowest performing candidate in each of those polls.
Specifically, the national poll conducted by npr/pbs 6.10-12, has Mr. Oliver at 1%, tying Dr. Stein, and significantly behind Dr. West at 3% , Mr. Kennedy at 11%, and President Biden and President Trump, each in the low 40s. When we factor in ballot access, existing and trendline-projected, Dr. West and Dr. Stein are quite similar ideologically, but Dr. Stein is on track to have significantly better ballot access than Dr. West.
This points to Dr. Stein gaining some of the votes Dr. West gets in national polls which mention both, and likely coming in well ahead of Mr. Oliver in raw votes and percentage in November. I think Dr. Stein, Mr. Oliver, and Dr. West are all also going to suffer from a significant dropoff, as usually happens with candidates voters reasonably conclude have no chance of winning.
Specifically, I do not believe any of them are likely to end up closer to 1% than 0%. Dr. West, although currently polling the best of those three, is most likely to do least well of the three, due to what appears to be a halfhearted and/or disorganized ballot access effort with a start that’s both late and slow, relatively speaking.
Mr. Kennedy is the only nonduopoly candidate with a nontrivial potential to achieve the escape velocity it would take to turn this traditional drop off into its opposite. However, given his exclusion from Thursday’s debate, he’ll be fighting very significant headwinds in achieving such an escape velocity.
The Pennsylvania poll, conducted way back in April by an outfit I haven’t heard of to the best of my memory (perhaps local?), includes only Mr. Oliver and Dr. Stein in addition to the big two. It shows her at 5%, and him at 3%. In a battleground state, especially, I expect that drop off to be by more than an order of magnitude for each, especially given the other candidates they excluded who are likely to make that States ballot.
The Iowa poll, 6/9-14 by the Des Moines Register, includes only Mr. Kennedy at 9% and Mr. Oliver at 2% in addition to President Trump, who unsurprisingly beats President Biden handily in that state, 50-32 in way early polling. Most of my analysis of PA carries over to IA, despite it not being a likely battleground.
Lastly, the Texas poll, conducted even earlier in April than the Pennsylvania poll, likewise unsurprisingly shows President Trump handily besting President Biden, Mr. Kennedy at 9%, Dr. Stein at 2%, and Mr. Oliver at 1% . Most of the above analysis likewise applies to Texas, with the only significant difference likely being the number of candidates on the ballot, since Texas is significantly more stringent in this regard than the other states named.
If Mr. Perry’s survey of polls was exhaustive, we can conclude, based on which candidates were included and which were excluded, that the unnamed poll our esteemed host referred to was the Pennsylvania poll.
I wouldn’t have phrased either comment nearly so nicely here or at any other site less prone to censorship than the ones where those were submitted, which is what necessitated the safekeeping.
My uncle replied, in the wrong thread on this site:
“Nephew: play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I eschew commenting at that site due to their propensity for censorship.”
I didn’t notice his error earlier, and posted a series of follow-up on the same wrong thread. I’ll now try to post those in the correct thread, here.
Uncle, your decision is respectable and sensible. Mine is different, due primarily to that little matter you’re well aware of. It’s not a stupid game for me, for reasons elaborating which would be far outside the scope of what some participants and lurkers should know. The prizes, however, are admittedly becoming of diminishing value and increasing difficulty, as in any well digging/pumping or mining enterprise. I’m learning things as I go, to put it succinctly.
In the particular discussion in question, the esteemed host in question has quite stubbornly dug in his heels, regarding his statement:
“On the bright side, I spotted a Presidential poll that included Chase Oliver. It was a bit odd in that it skipped Kennedy. It included Stein. It did not include West or the Constitution Party candidate, so it was a four-way poll.”
Indeed, his stubbornness has now extended to not approving the above quoted two comments, in addition to others which were just as politely worded.
The discussion in question, if anyone is curious, is at
https://thirdpartywatch.com/2024/06/11/mcardle-appoints-reconciliation-committee/
Repeated, polite, and tremendously reasonable inquiries as to why he names every other candidate individually, and only Randall Terry by party, were met with stonewalling and disapproval, as in not being published, much less answered.
I took pains to point out I was not implying malice, to no avail. I even asked that whatever portions of my comments would meet the inscrutable and apparently capricious publication standards be published, exciting whatever for any reason might be impermissible, likewise to no avail.
This morning, the increasingly less esteemed host passive aggressively replied to an unpublished comment of mine stemming from the above in this manner:
“a complete list of known Presidential candidates, see https://politics1.com/p2024.htm
There are, it appears, several hundred of them. If you want to list them in some order, you get to choose where to quit listing, knowing that there are many more to go. Or you get tired of typing, knowing that the remainder will feel ignored.”
The reply was so oblique that I didn’t realize at the time that it was even a reply to me at all, and wasted time composing a lengthy, polite, and entirely reasonable reply on that comment’s own terms. My reply didn’t even obliquely reference any party or candidates by name . It was likewise not approved.
Tl; Dr – upshot, at this point, I must regrettably conclude you are correct – the experiment has reached its conclusion, given the intentional pigheaded passive aggressive obstinate rudeness and intentional ignorance of that “esteemed” host.
It’s his playground, the rules are entirely at his capricious whim, so unfortunately, it is indeed a stupid game at this point, even given the matter I don’t discuss here.
‘Tis a shame, for reasons I won’t mention.
We are now caught up in the original thread here.
Errata: Wikipedia should read Woke Pedo site.
Probably lots of other errata. I might go back and look later.
The esteemed host replies at
https://thirdpartywatch.com/2024/06/23/minor-note-on-comments/
“Comments should attempt to stay on topic. We will not be publishing comments that urge people not to vote for a third party or that attempt to predict vote outcomes. We will report polling data that accurately list candidates, because it is newsworthy when pollsters correctly report which candidates are on the ballot.”
“
My unpublished reply – I submitted it despite my disgust at how we got there:
The comments you didn’t publish were on topic, or attempted to be. Either as to the topic post, or as to the comments they were in reply to. The poll you reported on, I’ve now deduced with Mr. Perry’s help, was a PA poll conducted in April. It didn’t accurately list either who is likely to be on the PA ballot nor who was on the PA ballot at the time.
The additional rules you list here are entirely new, at least to me. I’ve made every possible effort to comply with your rules. I made it clear that I was not implying malice, but was asking honest questions in good faith. I asked you to take out anything out of any comments that violated your rules and publish whatever remains. That was after doing everything I could to comply with your rules, but not knowing what all of them are, I gave that additional effort to comply.
I never urged anyone not to vote for a third party here. If I did, when and where? I personally voted for third parties and independent presidential candidates until 2016, and if my vote was solely based on ideology, still would. I’ve voted third party down ticket even more recently. I have by no means at all ruled out voting for them again.
I’ve urged people to direct their efforts elsewhere, and given my honest view that both major and minor parties will become increasingly unimportant going forward. I’m sorry if that broke your rules. I was polite about it, didn’t see any reason to believe it was against the rules, and honestly shared my opinions in response to questions and out of a desire to see people here direct their efforts optimally towards their goals – not even slightly out of hostility against those goals, third party voters, or third party votes.
Quite the opposite – my goals are distinctly “third party” – my prior presidential general election voting history was Paul 88, Perot, Perot, Buchanan, write in, Barr, Goode – and third party voters are my people.
I didn’t even realize that your comment about politics1 was a backhanded reply to my unpublished comments when I painstakingly composed a long reply to it, which unfortunately I did not save , addressing it on its own terms. I only realised that after you didn’t publish that, either.
You must have intentionally missed the point of my other subsequent analyses today, which was not by any means prediction – that was tangential to my main points – and certainly by no means to tell anyone how I think they should vote, which to my knowledge I never even attempted.
I did manage to save those analyses and publish them elsewhere. If you allow your readers to be permitted to see a link to where, I would love it if you would permit them to see a link and let them make up their own minds as to what my main point was.
I don’t expect it at this point, but that would be very fair and generous, and you’ve surprised me in that direction before, just when I had out of misunderstanding given up on you.