As seen at Politico:
Unity08, a fledgling organization seeking to nominate a credible third-party candidate for the 2008 presidential campaign, released the rules for its online nomination process today.
Candidates seeking the Unity08 nomination must pick a running-mate before the balloting starts, and must be “serious about public service.” Tickets must be bipartisan, formed with at least one Republican and one Democrat, or with independents running as part of a unity team.
Convention “delegates” will vote to select the candidate. Those delegates must be registered voters and sign up online. A first round of voting in May 2008 will narrow the list of contenders to five candidates. In June 2008, there will be multiple rounds of balloting held until one candidate wins a majority of the vote. The voting will all be conducted online.
So, has anyone put the question to Bloomberg yet? From what I know of the guy, he would be a rather well-funded centrist candidate. And, the idea of a 3-way race among Clinton, Giuliani, and Bloomberg seems incredibly amusing to me.
I do, however, question the wisdom of starting the balloting process in May of 2008. It seems fairly likely that both the pachyderms and the donkeys will have their ballots distilled before then, perhaps even by the February mega-primary. If Unity is serious about fielding a viable candidate, I’d think that they’d want to have a nominee decided upon about the time the rest of the ballot becomes clear, in order to minimize issues with differentials in fundraising time.