Greg Orman Advocates for More Inclusive Presidential Debates

From Richard Winger at Ballot Access News:

Greg Orman, an independent candidate for U.S. Senate in Kansas last year who came fairly close to winning, has this op-ed in the Concord Monitor. It advocates more inclusive presidential general election debates.

Excerpt from the Orman op-ed:

This duopoly, facilitated by the CPD, is distorting the marketplace of ideas in our political system, and perpetuating status quo by protecting the major parties from real, unfettered competition. Americans don’t like the product we’re getting, but thanks to rules like this, we’re stuck with it. That’s why I’ve joined 47 other political, military, business and academic leaders to call on the CPD to change this rule and create a free and fair process that would give Americans the debate stage that they so clearly want.

These debate rules are just one of the many ways our system is rigged against success for independents and other parties, but they’re an important one. Competition drives innovation and serves consumers. The lack of it in our politics has led to stagnation, and the lack of it on the national stage of our debates has too often limited us to picking the lesser of two evils. It’s time for us to #changetherule, fix this broken system and begin to improve our democracy by making it truly competitive again.

With over 43 percent of Americans (and, coincidentally, 43 percent of New Hampshire residents) now identified as politically independent, independents make up the largest cohort of voters in our country. Yet, it’s a group that is almost entirely unrepresented in Washington.

I ran for the U.S. Senate as an independent in my home state of Kansas against an incumbent Republican this past fall. While we mounted a strong campaign and went into Election Day tied in the polls, we ultimately fell short. Along the way, we confronted a host of obstacles built into the system, designed to make it more difficult for independent candidates to compete and succeed.