Colbert Ballot Bid Shot Down

wizzard2k writes "Some of you may have seen Stephen Colbert's bid for the South Carolina Presidential Primary, however it seems his hopes to appear on the ballot as a candidate for the Democratic Party have been shot down. From the report: 'Stephen Colbert's bid to get on the ballot for the upcoming Democratic primary in his home state was shot down on Thursday (November 1) by the executive committee of the South Carolina Democratic Party. Colbert's bid was voted down 13-3 ... Using criteria such as whether the candidate was recognized in the national news media as a legitimate candidate and whether they'd actively campaigned in the state, the committee put the kibosh on the Colbert bid.'"

Settles that...

[ackthpt]

I Go Pogo in '08 [igopogo.com]

Re:Democracy?

[bouchecl]

Well I hope at least they gave him back his $2500.

They will, according to this story [google.com]

Pat Paulson

[bobdehnhardt]

I'm reminded or comedian Pat Paulson, a regular fixture on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour back in the late 60's (yes, I'm showing my age). He was a perennial (fake) presidential candidate back then. He managed to get on the ballot a few times, and came in second to George H.W. Bush in the North Dakota Republican primary, and second to Bill Clinton in the 1996 New Hampshire primary.

But what I remember best was his bid to get on the California primary in '96. He had twice the number of required signatures on his petition, paid the fees, filed well in advance of the deadline, but was still denied. March Fong Yu, California Secretary of State, explained the denial as "he's not serious about the campaign."

Paulson's response: "You mean those other guys are?"

310 of us wrote him in anyway....

Re:If Fred Thompson and Ronald Reagan can run...

[jtroutman]

It's fairly simple, digitaldc. The Democrats have requirements for candidates. One of those requirements is that the candidate's campaign be "viable". Since Colbert was only running in one state, his campaign was deemed to not be viable.

Re:There's Ron Paul

[Tofystedeth]

He's also quite the racist, but let's not let that get in the way.

Re:There's Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see it that way. Voting for Ron Paul in the primaries would actually be a sharp rebuke of the policies of the current administration.

Re:Mainstream Media Decide WHAT?

[bckrispi]

Although, yes, their decision was based on the idea that across national news, it was ambiguous if his candidacy was real or not.

Colbert has said numerous times in the past weeks that he is a serious candidate in South Carolina, and nowhere else. This is probably what doomed him, as the SC Democratic committee bases its decisions in no small part on the National electability of a candidate. You simply cannot win a national election if you only run in one state.

Re:Good thing..

[mfrank]

South Carolina requires a filing fee of $ 20,000 for each candidate, so the Republican party of South Carolina makes $10,000 off each candidate they put on the primary ballot, and the Democratic party of South Carolina loses $17,5000 for each one of theirs.

That tells you which party knows anything about financial matters :)

These quotes appeared in Ron's newsletter

[spun]

He claims they aren't written by him. But they appeared in his newsletter, which the man presumably has control over. So, decide for yourself if he's a racist.

Paul reported on gang crime in Los Angeles and commented, "If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be."

        "Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal," Paul said.

        Paul also wrote that although "we are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers."

        Stating that lobbying groups who seek special favors and handouts are evil, Paul wrote, "By far the most powerful lobby in Washington of the bad sort is the Israeli government" and that the goal of the Zionist movement is to stifle criticism.

A publication endorsed by Ron Paul put forth those opinions. Those are the facts. Spin it any way you like, in my book he's a racist.

In Soviet Russia

[spaceyhackerlady]

In Canada (sorry, not Soviet Russia), we have the Rhinoceros Party [rhinoparty.com] for political humour. They have had some fun policies, like bulldozing the Rocky Mountains as a makework project to reduce unemployment, and paying off Canada's national debt by putting it on Visa.

In one election some years back I was so disgusted with the mainstream candidates (I had 4 to choose from) that I voted Rhinoceros. Lots of other people did too, and they came very close to electing an MP.

...laura

Re:In Soviet Russia

[pjt33]

The British equivalent is the Official Monster Raving Loony Party [omrlp.com], which has had a handful of policy successes - most notably the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18.

Re:The real reason they quashed it...

[djp928]

The Democratic party gets to decide who runs as a Democrat. If you want Colbert on the ballot, write him in yourself or get him to run as an Independent.

subject to equal opportunity

[Descalzo]

I think they are. When I registered with my party, and when I attended the caucus meeting and county meeting, no one ever asked me anything about race or anything else like that. I think the closest they came was reading the official party policy and informing me that I should not plan on getting any support if I didn't support the party platform.

Re:Fear

[Surt]

Heck, I would vote for him because I genuinely believe he'd be more competent than any other candidate.

Re:There's Ron Paul

[erlenic]

Have you ever looked at the voting record for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or the Voting Rights Act of 1965? Both of these bills did a lot to advance civil rights in America. For the CRA, 80% of Republicans voted yes, and 60-something percent of Democrats voted yes. VRA: R 84%, D 77%. Oh, and check out the region breakdown for the Civil Rights Act. Maybe you won't be so quick to call yourself a Southern Democrat after seeing that, unless you're proud to identify with racists.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#By_party [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act#Vote_count [wikipedia.org]

Disclaimer:
I'm not trying to say the Republicans are champions of Civil Rights. Far from it, just look at the Patriot Act. But the Democrats aren't any better. If you want truly equal treatment for all, vote Libertarian.

The Democrats do keep people off the ballot.

[jbn-o]

Although it didn't come up in this story with Stephen Colbert, I believe I can address why the Democrats and Republicans are part of the problem when it comes to American electoral politics: Ralph Nader is currently suing the Democrats for the stunts they pulled to keep him off the ballot when he ran in 2004 as an independent. It's worth your while to learn why Nader is suing and ask yourself if you are better served by having a few corporate candidates to choose from or more candidates spanning the political spectrum of ideas on the ballot. Voters aren't sufficiently outraged to support non-Democrat/non-Republican candidates, choosing to not vote at all most times. But their anger at the process is rising while the two major parties put up what Lawrence O'Donnell calls "virtually indistinguishable candidates" (and, let me assure you, after canvassing for signatures to get someone on the ballot in a local Congressional race, I know there's plenty of anger out there on this issue).

If you want to have a more informed view of the power which the Democrats and Republicans hold and how they use that power to keep candidates off the ballot, I suggest looking into

• the materials Nader's lawyer Carl Mayer referenced in his interview on yesterday's Democracy Now! [democracynow.org] (video [archive.org] and audio [archive.org] in a variety of formats),
• the Open Debates website [opendebates.org], particularly their criticisms of the current American presidential televised presentations [opendebates.org] by which most American voters learn about the allowable range of debate in the US—the televised "debates" are a sham run by a partisan and corporate-sponsored group called the "Commission on Presidential Debates" which is headed by former Democrat and Republican higher-ups
• both discs of the 2-disc DVD "An Unreasonable Man [anunreasonableman.com]" (a related entry from my blog [digitalcitizen.info]), the recent documentary about Nader. In the candidacy portion of the movie (which isn't most of what's on these discs), the question before you isn't whether you agree with his politics, it's why he and so many other candidates have a hard time running. The second disc has a series of short videos on apropos topics including "What happened to the Democratic Party?" and "Debating the Role of Third Parties in the U.S.".

The real rub in Colbert's rejection is that he was polling higher than some Democrats (according to one brief clip Colbert played on his show last night). Perhaps the Democratic Party wanted to be the group that shut those Democratic Party candidates out, not let some citizen show them up and point out how managed American elections really are.

Re:Bloomberg/Colbert '08.

[lenski]

Not to argue, but to provide a thought... I remember Andy Kaufman's performances well. Some of them were as good as just about anything Steven has ever done. IMHO however, Steven wins in the consistency department. Kaufman's characters had some gaps, while (still IMHO) Steven manages to carry off one of the most flawless narcissistic characters I've ever seen presented. It takes some major creativity cojones to deliver essentially every day as Steven does. And he does it with such panache, he's been able to "get" guests of essentially all stripes to join him in his performance. (Henry Kissinger? Introducing a guitar battle? With the Decemberists? Simply amazing...)

(A side note: I was a young worker at Warner Qube during a time when Mr. Kaufman was performing semi-regularly there. He was a genuinely interesting man, his talent was significant and worthy of our respect.)

Re:Mainstream Media Decide WHAT?

[Brandybuck]

The Democrat Primary is for the purpose of decising the Democrat Candidate. He can still run for office under a few other parties, or as an independent. Believe it or not, the Democrat Party is a private organization. They could choose their candidates by lottery if they wanted, or by caucus (as some states do), or simply executive decision.

Bitching that the Democrat Party of South Carolina won't let him run is like bitching that the Moose Lodge won't let him run for Grand Poobah.

Re:The real reason they quashed it...

[sumdumass]

I was thinking within the respect of the population of the state of South Carolina (4.3 million by 2007 estimate). The population sampling requirements for a state would/should be a lot lower then for the entire country's population. But you should be able to poll for each stater and then have a sample representing the entire country by combining the results. With the electoral vote system in the US, you really need to keep the states separate when considering presidential bids and state matters.

I read something a while back where they were claiming that some of the major polling companies can do this with such a low representation or the populace. This is when I started giving incorrect results (well the exit poll thing was a joke Rush Limbaugh started by I haven't stopped yet.)