Hat tip to Chuck Moulton for the tip:
Free and Equal Elections Foundation today announced that its second 2012 Presidential debate is scheduled for October 30 in Washington, DC, from 9:00pm to 10:30pm Eastern Time. The venue will be announced shortly.
As a follow-up to Free & Equal’s October 23 debate at the Hilton Chicago, viewers of the first debate will choose which two candidates advance to the final debate on October 30 via instant runoff voting online. The debate will be broadcast live online and will focus on international issues.
Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Constitution Party candidate Virgil Goode, and Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson have all confirmed their participation in the October 23 debate.
Following the initial October 23 debate, viewers can vote for the candidates online, ranking their first and second choices. This form of instant runoff voting (IRV) — a method used in numerous countries, United States jurisdictions, and private organizations — allows voters to submit their top two choices, so they aren’t “throwing away” a vote. Voting ends 24 hours after the end of the debate. The top two candidates with the most votes will be announced Thursday morning and will advance to the final debate on October 30.
If the CPD debates allowed additional candidates in a first debate only followed by a vote on which candidates viewers want to see more of, that would not be ideal, but it would be better than what they do now.
I disagree with this. What this is saying the system in place currently where only the Democrat and Republican candidate for President debate is justified. After all they are the “top two” as it relates to support.
And (I know this will not happen but ) what if the President said I want to be in the Free and Equal debate. Does this mean Gary Johnson is out? Jill Stein?
The criteria should be: Any candidate that is on the ballot in enough states and meets the qualification to serve as President according to the Constitution and could in theory be elected President should be in the Presidential debates. I would also include this criteria: In the unlikely event that a candidate for President does not meet the previous criteria the candidate should be in the debates if they are polling 15%.
I would also allow write in ballot status to be counted in criteria one so long as the number of write in ballot status states is less than regular ballot status states.
I like approval voting better than IRV and would rather see all four in the second debate as well.
However, I understand why it makes sense to them from an organization-building perspective.
I’d much rather just see a second debate. I agree with Red. I’m fine with displaying IRV, but this seems counterproductive.
I’m going to guess that they are trying to build a list and get people more into checking their site repeatedly, sharing the link to the poll etc by way of doing the runoff.
Yeah, the 2 candidates only debate just feeds into the Democrat/Republican scam that people should only be able to hear from 2 candidates. It sends a pretty bad message when we’re fighting top-2 in California and many other states only to have a 3rd party debate organizer insist on only 2 candidates.
I not sure what the point of this top two system is unless it is just to make a point aboit IRV. I think it would be better to just give all four candidates more exposure with a second debate?
CM made a similar point in the e-mail he sent passing this on.