On October 29, the Commission on Presidential Debates said it won’t change the 15% poll rule that it has used throughout this century. Here is the announcement. Although the decision was made on October 28, it was not announced until October 29.
Two lawsuits are pending against the 15% rule, both in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. They are Level the Playing Field v Federal Election Commission, and Johnson v Commission on Presidential Debates. The first one depends on campaign finance law and the second on antitrust law.
CPD hanging on as long as they can to the exclusive Rep/Dem debates I see.
I doubt that the Commission will ever lower the 15% polling criterion unless they lose a lawsuit challenging that requirement.
Of course they didn’t change it. They’ll have to be dragged kicking and screaming into opening the debates. Here’s hoping those lawsuits are heard by a fair judge; a few still do exist (a couple of judges hearing the NSA cases have called the mass spying out for the Orwellian system that it is). Otherwise, it’ll fall to voters to eventually reclaim democratic elections, and I’m not too hopeful about it on the national level (although locally here in s. Illinois it’s getting interesting…).
Well, that certainly sucks. I think a viable solution would be to change the 15% nationwide for a third party/independent candidate to 15% of the votes cast in the previous election for a Democrat or Republican or if 15% are undecided/ support a third party/ don’t know, they should get their voice heard.
The LP or another third party would have to get five percent for president for at least two elections in a row before the powers that be would even give a hearing.
The 15% threshold is an arbitrary number.
We at the 9th USA Parliament use thrsholds established by Swiss physicist Eduard Hagen-Bach Bishoff for pure proportional tepresentation (PR) and so we gave up this failed game of trying to sue for new arbitray numbers.
For those who all cry foul, save your breath, we at the USA Parliament have been enjoying mathematically perfect elections, equal ballot access and equal free speech among our team for more than 20 years and it works gine.
http://www.uspsrliament.otg
If the CPD, which is a private entity, doesn’t want pluralistic debates, maybe we the people should convince a public entity to create a special commission on debates. We can invite all the candidates, have an economic incentive and create a different debate format.