The Socialist Party is on the ballot for U.S. Senate in Ohio this year. Its nominee is Dan La Botz. On September 20, La Botz filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against the eight newspapers who are sponsoring three televised debates for the Democratic and Republican nominees for U.S. Senate. The complaint points out that the debate sponsors have set no objective criteria on who should be admitted to these debates.
The debate sponsors had told La Botz, “The Ohio News Organization generally follows the structure used by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which allows for only the major-party candidates to debate.” This statement, of course, is inaccurate. The Commission on Presidential Debates has objective but harsh criteria; any candidate who is at 15% in the polls is invited into their debates. By contrast, the Ohio newspaper consortium has no criteria except that they only want the two major party candidates in their debate. Because the debate is sponsored by corporations, the complaint charges that these corporations are making an illegal campaign donation to the Democratic and Republican nominees.
The Ohio U.S. Senate race this year has five candidates on the ballot. The other candidates are the Constitution Party nominee and an independent candidate.
It’s worth remembering that even when the criteria are “objective”, they can still be written to essentially exclude all minor party and independent candidates. For example, in Minnesota a number of the debates use the same criteria… you either need to win a primary (which in Minnesota is only allowed for the major parties), or you need to poll higher than 5%. Unfortunately there are no polls for most races (even constitutional offices like State Auditor), and even when there are they usually don’t include the minor party or independent candidates. So even if “undecided” polls at 19%, like it did recently for governor, the minor party and independent candidates have no way to get into the debates, even though the criteria are “objective”.