As Ballot Access News reports,
This newspaper describes the Canadian four-party debate of August 6. The consensus seems to be that the leaders of all four parties did well. Also see this story.
And:
The Republican presidential debate on the evening of August 6 had ten candidates. It lasted two hours. The debate succeeded in giving the audience a strong mental impression of each of the ten candidates. This comment is not meant to suggest that the Fox News questioners necessarily did a good job of picking questions. It is unfortunate that there was zero mention of environmental problems. Nevertheless, the event shows that multi-candidate debates can be very successful.
Earlier this year, the leaders of seven political parties in Great Britain debated each other.
Meanwhile in US general elections, only two candidates have been allowed to debate in every election since 1992, aside from far less promoted and viewed second tier debates, thanks to a 15% polling requirement using polls that usually don’t include more than two candidates. Using that same poling criteria in this week’s Republican debate would have left one candidate on the stage rather than ten. In 1992 billionaire independent Ross Perot qualified for the main debates, but would not have if the 15% rule had been in effect at that time (it was put in place right afterwards).
The CoPD ruled 4-2 against more accessible debates. The article mentions that Joseph Lieberman is the first person who has ever actually appeared in a Commission on Presidential Debates event who has since criticized the exclusionary rules. As the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 2000, he debated Dick Cheney in the CoPD vice-presidential debate.
In 2012, in an effort that came together mostly at nearly the last minute, activists persuaded four out of ten CoPD corporate sponsors to back away from their sponsorship;this effort will be continued and expanded for 2016. In 2008, a group called Rock the Debates worked to get Democratic and Republican contenders in the early to go on the record as to whether they would commit to more open debates. So far this year John Kasich was put on the record with this question in NH.
This year, the Greens, Libertarians and Level the Playing field, which is financed and promoted by many of the same wealthy investors and other prominent people who were behind Americans Elect, have joined together to sue the Federal Election Commission over this issue. The Libertarians and Greens and their 2012 (and possibly 2016) presidential candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are planning a second lawsuit against the CoPD itself with the financing going through Our America Initiative, of which Johnson is honorary chair. On an OAI state directors call two days ago I asked about the timing of when this lawsuit, which has been delayed relative to projections several times, would be filed. The previous estimate we had heard was late July. This time we were told in one week; although that is not completely firm, the estimates are becoming closer each time the question is posed.
Donald Trump, who is currently leading the polls for the Republican nomination, continues to openly speculate that he may switch to running outside the establishment parties in the general election. Trump has previously flirted with independent and Reform Party runs in past years, and was briefly a candidate for the Reform Party nomination (he withdrew). Over on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders, another Independent Senator who has caucused with the Democrats and previously run with the Liberty Union socialist party in Vermont, appears to be the strongest challenger to frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Unlike Trump, Sanders has now said that he will not consider running outside the duopoly if he doesn’t receive the establishment party nomination. Before Trump and Sanders announced as candidates for the Democratic and Republican nominations there was widespread speculation that they might run as independents or alternative party candidates.
Voices calling for opening up the debates have included the editors of the Richmond Dispatch newspaper, former Congressman Christopher Shays in a letter to the New York Times, Former Bush Administration official James Glassman, former Congressman Vin Weber, Free and Equal, Bloomberg editors, and many others.
If the 15% polling requirement had been eliminated in 2012, with the other existing rules left in place, there would have been four candidates in the debates, the same as the just concluded Canadian debate. And the most that would have been on the stage at any time in US history under such rules would have been seven, the same number as April’s UK general election debate – both well short of the Republican debate earlier this week on Fox News.
Stay tuned for more on this story as it develops.
After Bernie Sanders sees this post, he will ask why we need so many brands of diapers.
He works in DC, the answer should be obvious.