Harvard Professor Drops Bid for President

Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig has dropped his bid for president after he said Democratic Party rules changes have “shut him out” of the race.

With poll numbers below 1 percent, Lessig did not qualify for Democratic candidate debates, according to Deocratic Party rules that require candidates to register at least that total in the six weeks leading up to a debate in order to be included on stage.

“It is now clear that the party won’t let me be a candidate, and I can’t ask people to support a campaign that I know can’t even get before members of the democratic party,” Lessig said in a video on his campaign website. “Or to ask my team or my family to make a sacrifice even greater than they’ve already made. I must today end my campaign and turn to the question of how best to continue to press for this reform now.”

Lessig was running a campaign based almost solely on campaign finance reform. Crowdfunding his campaign, Lessig has said he planned to serve as president only long enough to pass the Citizen Equality Act of 2017, which aims to ensure equal representation in government. Campaigns would be financed publicly, “replacing cronie funding of campaigns with funding by citizens through small-dollar vouchers or matching funds.”

The act would also move Election Day to a national holiday to make it easier for all to vote, and end gerrymandering, the political realigning of voting districts to stack the deck in favor of a political party to remain in power.

Upon seeing the Citizen Equality Act passed, Lessig said on his website he would have resigned as president, leaving his running mate to become president “of a government that works.” He recently pulled back from that pledge in an attempt to gain more traction in the campaign.

However, the self-described “referendum candidate” has struggled to register on polls nationally, or even to have his name included in polls among the other Democratic candidates.

His slumping poll numbers would exclude him from the debates, preventing him from being considered a legitimate candidate, which he blames on party rule changes. He has touted two recent polls that show him with 1 percent support, but says the Democratic party changed the rules to require the poll numbers to be registered prior to the six-week mark.

“I may be known in tiny corners in the tubes of the Internet, but I am not well known to the general public generally,” Lessig said. “Our only chance to make this issue central to the 2016 presidential election was to be in those debates.”

The Democratic National Committee said the rules have not been changed, and that the requirement was there all along, The Hill has reported.

Lessig’s withdrawal from the race leaves just three major Democratic candidates — Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.