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by avenoir 3224 days ago
The DNC Charter [1] states numerous times that it is their responsibility to establish processes which ensure the office of President of the United States is selected by a fair and equitable process. However, being a private entity they are not obligated to do a damn thing. While they violated their own charter by favoring one candidate over the other I don't believe they actually broke any laws. And this is what makes this interesting. People can be very upset about what they've done, but nobody can really do much about it because they're not a government agency. Isn't it fascinating? We have an entity with incredible power over the election process and absolutely no oversight.

[1] http://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.democrats.org/Downloads/DNC_...
2 comments
nextstep 3224 days ago
Yeah, it is a very interesting situation. It is unfortunate that these private parties have so much power and support from the states but aren’t really held accountable to the voters.

This sort of system maybe worked better early in the days of the US but with our two very entrenched parties, all of this serves to prevent any third party becoming a viable option.

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arca_vorago 3223 days ago
Indeed. Part of how they have done this is by taking over the state legislatures (both parties), and passing laws and regulations at the Secretary of State level that make it extremely difficult for third-parties and independents to run for federal office. For example, in Texas, a person wanting to run as an independent candidate for president needs to get 80k signatures on a petition by people who voted in neither party primary. Except they will dispute as many signatures as possible, so it's more like 120k needed. Also, you have 69 days to do it!

Both parties are corporations and are part of the problem. They circled the wagons when Ross Perot scared the shit out of them in 92, and the League of Women Voters withdrew from doing the debates because of how unfair they were becoming.

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prostoalex 3223 days ago
In theory it has few implications as there are dozens of political parties to help fill in the void https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in... In practice, however, it's next to impossible to run for a federal office on their ticket, so perhaps the focus should be on helping young political startups gain access to the federal stage.
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