Level the Playing Field
About
Level the Playing Field (LPF) is a political advocacy organization that apparently is the successor to Americans Elect.
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FEC Request
LPF submitted a request to the FEC to modify the rules for candidate debates. The request was published (by whom?) but with two parts redacted. Political advocacy organization Make Your Laws (MYL) entered a FOIA request to the FEC for the unredacted document. The FEC at first denied the FOIA request because the redactions concerned an ongoing formal complaint filed with the FEC, formally known as a "Matter Under Review" (MUR). MYL administratively appealed that denial. The FEC reversed their denial and released the unredacted document on 2015-01-21.
MYL added the following in its announcement of the release:
The redacted portions referred to a MUR filed by LPF against the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a privately run non-profit that has had a de facto monopoly on all major presidential debates since 1987. CPD is in effect run 50-50 by the Democratic and Republican parties, and has consistently excluded third party candidates from all national presidential candidate debates.
These debates are hugely important in who has a chance of being elected to high office, especially for president. LPF's rulemaking petition is a public proceeding to change how the debates are run to allow third party candidates a fair chance... yet LPF and CPD are commenting based on secret documents. We don't think that's fair, and it doesn't allow the public to make fully informed comments.
Therefore, we have filed a second FOIA request with the FEC asking for the release of all documents in the LPF v. CPD complaint. We also asked that the FEC publicly announce the release of the extra information and extend the period for public comment.
Links
Documents
- 2014-09-10 LPF: Petition to the FEC for Rulemaking (unredacted)
Posts
- 2015-01-21 Recently Level the Playing Field (LPF) asked the FEC to change the rules... (Make Your Laws on Google+): announcement of the release of the unredacted petition