Commission announces disposition of petitions for rulemakings regarding candidate debates (2009)

The Federal Election Commission has dismissed two petitions for rulemaking related to the Commission’s regulations on candidate debates at 11 CFR 110.13.

The first petition, filed in May 1999, called on the Commission to amend its rules so that the objective criteria for inclusion in presidential and vice presidential debates would be established by the FEC itself and not left to the judgment of the organizations staging the debates. The second petition for rulemaking, filed by several news organizations in April 2002, urged the FEC to amend its rules to state explicitly that the sponsorship by a news organization (or related trade association) of a candidate debate does not constitute an illegal corporate contribution in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act and that the Commission would have no jurisdiction over such sponsorship.

The Commission has decided not to initiate a rulemaking in response to these petitions. The petitions can be viewed online (Editor's note: Search REG 2002-12 and REG 1999-04). The Notice of Disposition of Petitions for Rulemaking was published in the July 28, 2009, Federal Register (74 FR 37179) and is available on the FEC website.