This article about the Democratic Party’s plans for a virtual roll-call in advance of the August national convention says that a virtual roll-call is impossible before July 13. That is because the Indiana Democratic Party won’t have chosen its delegates until that day.
The Hotline has this commentary by John Fund about the CNN debate rules. Here is the text:
“CTUP Senior Fellow, John Fund, is featured in the Wall Street Journal today, discussing CNN’s decision to include Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the presidential debate, but not Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
RFK Jr. failed to be the first independent candidate to make a presidential debate stage in 32 years. CNN said he failed to meet their conditions for inclusion: he only hit a 15 percent level of support in three rather than the needed four national polls, and he wasn’t on enough state ballots to potentially win the presidency.
As a news organization, CNN executives say they have the right to set their own standards. But in the spirit of transparency and fairness they should answer questions about how far they stretched to accommodate the wishes of the major parties who wanted RFK Jr. to be excluded. The CNN debate created a Catch-22 that made it impossible for Kennedy or any alternative candidate to reach the debate stage:
In May, Donald Trump told Scripps News he had “no problem” with Kennedy joining the debate. But a Trump official told the Washington Post that a CNN producer had promised that “RFK will not be on the stage.”
A Biden adviser told Axios in May: “Our criteria for a 1:1 debate was made clear publicly, it was made clear to CNN and they understood our position when we accepted their offer.”
CNN has declined to answer media inquiries on details of their negotiations.
What we do know is that CNN’s criteria would have excluded independent Ross Perot, who did participate in the 1992 debates, because he was only on states with 119 electoral votes as of mid-June that year. Perot, who won 19 percent of the national vote in 1992, was finished petitioning in many more states by June of that year, but state election offices didn’t verify all of his signatures until mid-September.
Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News, told me it is “irrational” to demand RFK meet a ballot access requirement because he has already filed signatures in states with 310 electoral votes and is almost certain to eventually be on all 50 state ballots.
Winger disagrees: “Actually, Trump and Biden aren’t currently on ANY state ballots because they haven’t even been nominated yet,” he says.
The now sidelined Commission on Presidential Debates, which ran every general-election debate between 1988 and this year agrees: “Until the conventions take place, we don’t know who the official nominees will be.”
There have been many times the two major parties colluded to exclude any outside voices from speaking directly to the American people. What’s different is that it now appears a media organization has cooperated with them.
The second and final presidential debate is now scheduled for September 10 on ABC, which hasn’t released its qualifying requirements. It has a chance to open up the process with fair rules, but few believe it will.
If RFK Jr is excluded from both debates that may be legal. But entrenching the two-party system also damages voters and the “democracy” that both major parties claim they are fighting to preserve.”
On June 20, two Nevada voters filed a lawsuit against the Nevada Secretary of State, seeking a determination that Kennedy can’t be on the ballot as an independent because he is a registered Democrat in New York. The lawsuit is in state court. Rockenfeller v Aguilar, 24 OC 00011, First District. UPDATE: see this story.
No state has ever before denied a presidential or vice-presidential candidate ballot access based on how that candidate is registered. Similar challenges failed in Pennsylvania in 2004, in 2020 in Arizona, and in 2020 in Idaho.
Nevada has had independent presidential and vice-presidential candidates in the past who had recently been registered members of a qualified party. They include James Stockdale, Ross Perot’s running mate in 1992, who had recently been a registered Republican; and Peter Camejo, Ralph Nader’s running mate in 2004, who was a registered Green. Also in 2016 Rocky De La Fuente was on as an independent for president in Nevada, and he was a registered Democrat.
Also John Anderson in 1980 was legally considered by his home state, Illinois, to be a member of the Republican Party, because he had voted in the 1980 Illinois Republican primary. Also he continued to list himself in the Congressional Directory as a Republican, all through 1980.
As to the point that Kennedy is running as a party nominee in some states and an independent in others, the lawsuit fails to recognize that a “presidential election” in November is actually 51 separate elections, and the voters are voting for presidential electors in each of those 51 jurisdictions. There is no formal link between these 51 separate elections.
Mexico held a presidential election on June 2. There were three debates, on April 7, April 28, and May 19. In all three debates, all three candidates participated. See this story.
Canada held general elections for Parliament in 2021 and also 2019. There have been no general parliamentary elections since then. In both 2019 and 2021, the leaders of five parties participated in debates. See this wikipedia story.
