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Cornell Hosts Third-Party Presidential Debates
clonebarkins writes "Tonight at 8:00, Cornell is hosting the third party presidential debate. Candidates debating are Michael Badnarik (Libertarian Party), Walt Brown (Socialist Party), David Cobb (Green Party), and Michael Peroutka (Constitution Party). Unfortunately, I cannot find any information about whether or not it will be broadcast anywhere."
But C-Span is supposed to rebroadcast it at a later time according to badnarik's site
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
This should be from the "Who-Gives-A-Crap" Department.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
They could broadcast it on the web, or at least record it, and bittorrent the video.
Whose really at fault that these candidates have so little support and have no chance of being elected, the CPD? You can complain about the CPD's criteria, but you don't have a word about why they weren't eligible?
Hey, why isn't this debate including everybody else running? This is an outrage!!
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
It appears that the Badnarik site is being /.'d please view the cornel site for more information on the debate until the bandwidth usage subsides.
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
In order for this debate to have credibility and in order to raise the profile of this debate, we need a "star" to give the questions to the candidates. Let's ask Bill O'Reilly to be the questioner.
If you hate what is happening to our nation, the USA, then please write the following on the November ballot.
president: Bill O'Reilly
vice-president: Tammy Bruce
I'll go this far, the first two CPD criteria are reasonable. 1. must meet the age and other requirements to BE president 2. Must be on the ballot in enough states to have a chance to win. It's #3 that is a catch 22. Must have an average of 15% support in four national polls to be included in the debates. Problem is, polls do not ask about third party candidates because "people havent heard their names", and people can't hear their names, because they are not included in the debates. We went from a non-partisan system under the League of Women Voters to the CPD which is run by the former national committe chairmen of both the Republican and Democratic parties....
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Constitution
Libertarian
Green
Socalist
Now that I've trolled for your attention, I want to say that there's no such thing as a wasted vote.
.01% of the vote is treated differently from a party that got 1.01%. If a party gets even 2% of the vote, they start to look mainstream. After all, getting 2% might be enough to alter the balance of power between the two major parties.
The election process is about more than just who wins. Sure, the winner is important, but there are other factors that have an impact on the behavior of government. For the sake of discussion, let's assume that one of the two major parties will win in November. Why vote for someone else?
A vote is a statement of your general favor for a given candidate. It's a winner-take-all proposition; you don't get to divide it among three candidates you like. It's assumed that you don't believe the candidate is perfect for you; he was just good enough to get your vote.
Voting for a third party or write-in candidate sends the signal that A) you care enough to vote and B) neither of the two major party clowns was good enough for you. To the extent that your vote matters at all, you have used it to tell the major parties that if their policies were more like the one for whom you voted, they might get your vote.
A vote for a third party encourages that party, and also the other minor parties. They see the number of people who voted for them, and know where their support is.
A vote for a third party lends them authority when they speak out. A press release from a party that got
But, it might be argued, doesn't that split the support for one of the major parties, causing the Most Evil Party to win instead of the Not Quite So Evil Party? Possibly, and that is part of the choice. Unless your tiny party is at one extreme of the spectrum occupied by the two majors, support for it will come proportionately from both of them.
Most people want to vote for a winner. To vote for a third party you have to get past that sense of wanting to be on the winning side and remember to vote your own mind. If you only vote for the candidate you think is going to win, you have effectively allowed someone else to vote for you.
Finally, voting for a third party encourages those who don't want to "waste" their vote that it's not such a waste. Voting is a herd phenomenon. When others see your party's vote total rising from past elections, they'll be more likely to vote that way themselves.
sigs, as if you care.
Maybe Walt Brown should sue John John for their monopoly on socialism. He should also attempt to reopen the anti-trust case against Microsoft for funding the Dems in their pursuit of socialism.
Sorry Walt, you're way off base. The title "Democrat" is used because they know if they outright used the word "Socialist" they would be laughed out of the government. Wait.. That's already happening.
... will be: Whose party is actually "third"?
Take a look at the url "MockElection-prezdebate.html". So who are they mocking?
What goes against both Bush and Kerry is they are BOTH from our "aristocratic" families. We claim that we have no king, but eerily enough, we seem to keep having that same families coming back to lead us.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
C-SPAN lists the third party debates as one of today's "events": http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/cspan. csp?command=dprogram&record=181858431
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
To a person on the far left, both Bruce and O'Reilly appear to be rightwing extremists. However, a person on the far left is little different from a Nazi and should be invited to leave the USA.
How would Bruce and O'Reilly be different from the current options? They support using the national guard to protect the borders and deporting foreign nationals. They support strong legislation to protect the environment. They support civil unions and allowing homosexuals to adopt.
I like O'Reilly because he takes deceptive, asinine talk (like that which often appears in this forum) and destroys it by using facts.
I'm going to the debate tonight (my organization is a co-sponsor). As others have already mentioned, Nader won't be there, although he's coming to Ithaca tomorrow night for a campaign stop (8PM, State Theater). C-SPAN is definitely taping the event, but I am not sure when they will air it. After seeing the past two televised debates between the major candidates, I am looking forward to some different political perspectives. There should also be many "interesting" people in attendence (people you can only find at a university). Personally, I am definitely on the left but have yet to decide which third party to support (although I am leaning towards the Green Party based on their platform). I just received my absentee ballot yesterday, so I need someone to write in.
It might be broadcast on Radio 5 Live's Up all night programme. The Presidential and Vice Presidential debates were broadcast at least.
Allergy advice: Contains eggs.
Feel free to check out the Ballot Access Status!
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
Now that I've trolled for your attention, I want to say that there's no such thing as a wasted vote.
I disagree.
The election process is about more than just who wins.
No, the lobbying, polling, debate, and forum process is about expressing wants. The election process is simply there to choose a president. During polling and so forth, you get to say "I want someone who pushes anti-abortion more strongly than Bush does".
A vote is a statement of your general favor for a given candidate. It's a winner-take-all proposition; you don't get to divide it among three candidates you like. It's assumed that you don't believe the candidate is perfect for you; he was just good enough to get your vote.
Yup. And this is exactly why we need IRV or some similar system instead of the existing first-choice-only. If such a system was adopted, a vote for a third party wouldn't be wasted. Under today's system, however, it is a waste.
Voting for a third party or write-in candidate sends the signal that A) you care enough to vote and B) neither of the two major party clowns was good enough for you. To the extent that your vote matters at all, you have used it to tell the major parties that if their policies were more like the one for whom you voted, they might get your vote.
I don't buy it. Consider what you're trying to say: that if "Party X" had just changed their politics, they would have gotten your vote. Presumably, this is to try and convince "Party X" to adopt your politics for the next election. However, we can demonstrate that this approach doesn't work. The 2000 elections were incredibly close, and the 2004 elections are shaping up to be the same way. This is the *ideal situation* for your claim to be coming true, if it ever was going to do so. If you didn't like, say, the Demms in 2000 and voted against them, but they didn't change to your favored policies in their running for the 2004 election (and they cannot have done so, or you wouldn't be voting against them now), it will *never* happen, as this is the time that they are most likely to need to bend over for your policies.
A vote for a third party encourages that party, and also the other minor parties. They see the number of people who voted for them, and know where their support is.
These parties can run polls if they want public opinion. Voting is there to choose the next President, not to express feelings -- there are better forums for that, where one can give out more detailed information, like *why* one prefers a different candidate.
But, it might be argued, doesn't that split the support for one of the major parties, causing the Most Evil Party to win instead of the Not Quite So Evil Party? Possibly, and that is part of the choice. Unless your tiny party is at one extreme of the spectrum occupied by the two majors, support for it will come proportionately from both of them.
A vote for a third party is one-half of a vote for your less-liked mainstream party. I hate to say it, but that's how it is. I'd be estatic if IRV or a similar voting reform gets adopted, but that's the only way to fix the system. Trying to come on Slashdot and get a majority of Americans to vote for a third party just isn't going to happen. Vote reform is a prerequisite.
Finally, voting for a third party encourages those who don't want to "waste" their vote that it's not such a waste. Voting is a herd phenomenon. When others see your party's vote total rising from past elections, they'll be more likely to vote that way themselves.
*If* this is actually true, it would simply strengthen your less-liked of the major parties.
May we never see th
To continue to preserve democracy in the United States, we MUST have at least a 3rd, and hopefully a 4th, 5th, 6th, Xth, party.
HOWEVER, voting for a 3rd party presidential canidate IS a wasted vote and considering how bad the current state of affairs today, IMNSH opinion irresponsible.
There are a lot more offices up for election on Nov 2nd than just the president. If you really want to get 3rd parties in the running vote for the lesser evil for the national offices, but start voting in 3rd party canidates for say, your local alderman, mayor, county clerk, sherriff, treasurer ect. Your decleration of disgust will mean about nothing in a national election - especially with the whole messed up electoral system - but your vote will COUNT in a local election. If only 100 people bother to vote for county clerk and you and 10 buddies vote 3rd party, or write in, then that is a 11% vote for the non duopoly canidate - enough to get them on the ballot next year.
We will not diversify government by only aiming at the big apple on top. Thats just tilting at windmills. It has to been done by a grass-roots effort. Not Grass Roots as in the Buzzword, but as in starting at the bottom and infiltrating and saturating all the small positions to provide a real foundation. Then, Then, you can start climbing the tree.
The big players control the big media and the big rules, but the little stuff is beneath the radar. Take the problems and turn them into solutions.
My dog will be holding an important press conference in the backyard tomorrow at 3pm. He will discuss his agenda if he's elected President.
We spen more per pupil than any other nation on earth and it has little to do with the area the school is in. In Minneapolis (hardly a rich area) they spend 11K per kid per year!
While I wasn't able to attend the debate here at Cornell last night (the miniscule number of seats available were long sold out), our campus newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun, wrote the following summary of the debate last night:
... We need to restore the republic."
... and a minister spoke at my wife's funeral ... Family: I was married for 49 years ... The pledge of Allegiance was written by a Socialist minister in Boston, there goes the republic," Brown said.
... is being able to make your own decisions. I want to emphasize the idea that you are not required to vote for the lesser of two evils."
... we must wean ourselves off the addiction to oil which is what got us into the war on Iraq."
"How many 'thirds' can there be?" was the question posed by Theodore Lowi, the J.L. Senior Professor of American Studies and moderator of last night's debate between third-party candidates in the upcoming presidential election. Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party, David Cobb of the Green Party, Walt Brown of the Socialist Party and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party discussed issues ranging from abortion to fossil fuel in front of a packed Rockefeller Auditorium.
The debate was televised by both C-SPAN and PBS.
The candidates began by introducing their platforms.
Peroutka identified his governing principles as "God, family and the republic." He urged members of the audience to "repeat the pledge of allegiance and stop at the 16th word; it's not just a distinction, it's a difference
David Cobb presented himself as the candidate from the party that "tells the truth." Cobb said that he is working to take "our country back from the corporate fat-cats who have hijacked it," and that the "media tries to marginalize" the Green Party because "Greens tell the truth."
Walt Brown did not spend his time for opening statements informing the audience of his viewpoints but instead refuted some of the statements that had already been made.
"God, family, republic -- that doesn't separate us. God: I was married by a minister
Michael Badnarik wanted to start by drawing the distinction between Libertarians and liberals.
"We are for liberty. What liberty is
After the audience had an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the platforms of the four candidates, the floor was opened for questions. The first question was on the war on terror, specifically, what should be done to win?
Peroutka, a constitutional expert, asserted that because Congress has not declared war, "we have not declared war in Iraq." In fact, he said, "we have not declared war since World War II." Therefore, "the Peroutka presidency -- if God would grant that glory -- would immediately end our involvement in Iraq."
Cobb, Brown and Badnarik did not focus as much as Peroutka did on the legality of entering war but all expressed the opinion that the war was unjust and, if elected, they would remove United States troops from Iraq as soon as possible.
A question asked about fossil fuel gave Cobb and the Green Party platform an opportunity to shine.
"The Green Party is calling for a sustainable alternative energy source. We, the people, don't control this government but
Peroutka said that he "[didn't] see anywhere in Article 1, section 8 anything about constitutional energy policies."
One student brought up whether or not the candidates endorse a living wage by asking, "The living wage for Ithaca is $8.68. I make $7 per hour. I don't need another buck-sixty-eight; I'll just spend it on music and alcohol. Isn't there a better way [to help people]?"
"Minimum wage laws put lots of people out of work -- particularly those people they were made to protect," Badnarik replied.
"Minimum wage is unconstitutional," Peroutka answered.
The polarization of the candidates was seen in their response to the topic of abortion: where Pero