From Politico on September 2:
“The Libertarian nominee for vice president of the United States is warning that the Commission on Presidential Debates could lose its tax-exempt status if the Libertarian ticket is excluded from the debate stage.
“Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s running mate, argued in an interview with POLITICO that the commission knows it could lose its tax-exempt status by excluding his ticket from the debates.
“‘They can play favorites,’ Weld said, referring to the Republican and Democratic parties. ‘They would lose their tax exempt status if they did that. And saying ‘we’re only going to have an ‘R’ and a ‘D’ we’re not going to have the third party Libertarians even if everyone wants them,’ I think their tax exempt status would be in jeopardy and I think they know that.’
“‘You know when the commission was set up something like 30 percent of the voters were Independents and now that’s climbing toward 50 percent,’ Weld added. ‘So the rational for having only an ‘R’ and only a ‘D’ is dissipating.”’
