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Saturday, August 06, 2016

Johnson v. Commission on Presidential Debates: Case Dismissed

Good try at forcing the CPD to stop making illegally large campaign contributions to the major party presidential candidates on the part of Gary Johnson and other candidates, but, as reported at Ballot Access News, federal judge Rosemary Collyer ruled in favor of the anti-competitive cartel's motion to dismiss (the complaint was based on anti-trust laws; Collyer ruled that if commercial actors call themselves political non-profits, they're not subject to those laws).

Personally I think the stronger case is under the legal campaign contribution limits. Collyer just ruled that what the CPD is engaged in is "political activity," and the free advertising they're giving away to the two major party candidates seems to exceed those limits.

If the major party candidates want to put on a 90-minute campaign commercial together, let them buy the time on a television station and pay for it with their campaign funds, going Dutch, instead of being given an exemption to the campaign finance laws that the other candidates don't get.

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