Since 1987, the Commission on Presidential Debates has been the only group that has held general election presidential debates in which the major party nominees have been willing to participate. The Commission receives support from large for-profit corporations, and these corporations are permitted to deduct deductions from federal income taxes.
On September 30, Congress unanimously passed S.3196, which will apparently be the first law to mention the Commission on Presidential Debates. The bill provides certain presidential candidates with office space and equipment and security clearances, before the general election. Specifically, nominees of parties that polled at least 25% of the presidential vote in the last election receive this assistance within three days after they are formally nominated. Other presidential candidates are also potentially eligible, if they are on the ballot in enough states to theoretically win the election, and if the Administrator of the General Services Administration believes the other candidate “has demonstrated a significant level of public support in national public opinion polls, so as to be realistically considered among the principle contenders for President.” To help the Administrator decide, the bill says he or she should “consider whether other national organizations have recognized the candidate as being among the principle contenders for the general election, including whether the Commission on Presidential Debates has determined that the candideate is eligible to participate in the candidate debates for the general election.”
It does not follow logically that the Commission on Presidential Debates shall forever into the future limit its debates to candidates who have a realistic chance of being elected. But because the Commission will now be mentioned in federal law, with a legal presumption that it will stick to that policy, it will be even more difficult than ever to persuade the Commission to liberalize its criteria. The Commission in recent presidential years has required a candidate to be at 15% in polls in order to be invited into the debates. Thanks to Dan Tokaji for this news.
The bill had been introduced by Senator Ted Kaufman of Delaware. When he introduced the bill, he said on the floor of Congress, “Third party candidates will be eligible if they meet the same criteria used by the Commission on Presidential Debates to participate in general election debates.”
Any 3rd party that had just pulled 25% in the preceding election will a) still have lost, and more importantly, b) been branded as a spoiler and probably had 95% of its supporters abandon it.
This “simple criteria” will easily guarantee that no 3rd party candidate will ever get a fair shake in the debates.
Ballot access is ridiculously difficult (as anyone reading this site knows), but even requiring that a candidate get ballot access in 270 electoral-votes-worth of states would be a better system. Because you only get one chance to go from “inconsequential” to “winner”, so you have to jump the chasm of “spoiler” in one go.
Of course, the statisticians in the two major parties’ electoral teams know all this.
Yes, under this bill, the Whig Party would have been eligible for the special benefits in 1856, even though there was no Whig Party presidential nominee that year. And the Progressive Party would have been eligible in 1916, even though there was no Progressive Party presidential nominee in 1916. It would be better to ignore the results of the previous presidential election and just depend on current poll results.
If “significant” were measured by percentage in polls divided by the percentage of times a candidate was actually *included* in the polls (and respondents weren’t “pushed” away from them) . . .
. . . or divided by the proportion of time spent on coverage of the candidate’s issue positions as a share of the total time for all issue coverage (not dollars-raised or other horserace coverage) . . .
. . . but I think that, absent something like that to take systemic bias into account, being on the ballot in enough states to win the Electoral College may be the best chance that Presidential tickets outside the “Big Two” have at a plausibly reasonable objective criterion for inclusion in the CPD debates.
Of course, if that ever were put in, we know that the next shoe to drop would be that a number of states found reasons to toughen ballot access even more. . . .
The CPD is crooked! Have an organization like the League of Women Voters invite all candidates that either have enough “virtual Electoral Votes” to win a “virtual Electoral College majority” or 5% of the votes in a poll.
What makes you think the League of Women Voters is a democratically legitimate group? What group (if any) is more democratically legitimate in California than the 6th California Parliament?
http://www.usparliament.org/ss11.htm
James,
OK, I’m sorry for forgetting about the US Parliament idea! What would your criteria be to invite Presidential candidates to debate?
The problem with relying on the League of Women Voters to sponsor a debate is that it wouldn’t guarantee meaningful access to debates for third-party candidates, either.
In 1980, the LWV sponsored the debates, and invited Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and John Anderson to the first debate. Carter said he would not participate in a three-person debate until he had the opportunity to debate Reagan one-on-one first. So the first debate went on with only Reagan and Anderson (and was broadcast by only two of the three networks).
Another debate the LWV had hoped to organize in 1980 was cancelled altogether due to an impasse between the Carter and Reagan campaigns.
Carter did eventually debate Reagan, but only after Anderson’s standing in the polls had dropped and the LWV decided that Anderson was polling too low to be invited to another debate.
It doesn’t matter that much who sponsors a debate if the major candidates refuse to participate.
If the CPD announces in 2012 that it is inviting the Democratic, Republican, Green, Libertarian, and Constitution party candidates to a debate, the Democratic and Republican candidates would likely announce that they couldn’t fit that debate into their schedules, but the other candidates were free to go on … and the debate would be broadcast only on C-SPAN, if it took place at all.
Since when it is the business of the party hacks in the gerrymander Congress to have any thing to do with who debates who in any election ???