The September 14 New York Times print edition contains a full-page ad from the Gary Johnson-Bill Weld presidential campaign, subtitled, “An Open Letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates.” It points out that polls show 62% of the public want the Libertarian ticket in the debates.
The ad also suggests that if the Commission will relax the 15% rule for the first debate, and allow three podiums, then Johnson and Weld will accede to being excluded from the later debates if they still aren’t at 15% in polls taken after the first debate.
An alternate would be to provide four podiums for the first debate, and then apply that same principle to all four of the presidential candidates who had participated in the first debate.
Richard, have you seen anyone photocopy the ad? I didn’t see a picture of it on Johnson’s Facebook page. Not sure if it can be found anywhere.
Not a photocopy, but I think this is what ran:
https://gallery.mailchimp.com/7950131d6fef31d276b1efbe8/files/Johnson_Weld_Open_Letter.pdf
The ad is linked on the LP’s web page under its blog listing on the home page.
Respect and thanks to the Johnson-Weld campaign for publicizing the issue. But polling should not be a criterion — it’s too easy to manipulate, and it’s not really an objective standard. Ballot access isn’t much fairer, but at least on or off is a fairly clear and objective fact tied to schedules specified in state laws. (You’d have to decide whether to stick with half/270 as the threshold, or follow my logic that one quarter of the EC votes or 135 is enough to guarantee a place in any House deliberations.)
Lower the poll average to 5% and make it automatic if you are on the ballot in every state.
Kevin–agreed. If you can get FEC money if you get five percent of the November vote, then it should be five percent for the debates. That would make it LP and GP.
A 5% threshold would be a lesser evil than 15%, but it would just give that much more incentive NOT to cover the alternative-party tickets.
Also, just wondering. What are the four states mentioned where Johnson has over 19 percent of the vote.
The CPD machinations are one more distraction issue.
MINORITY RULE in the USA is THE nonstop problem via ANTI-Democracy gerrymanders with Partisan robot party HACKS in executive and judicial offices exploiting such minority rule.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
If he is referring to the Washington Post Survey Monkey state by state poll, it’s actually five states that he’s at or above 19%. That would be New Mexico at 25%, Utah at 23%, and Alaska, Idaho, and South Dakota each at 19%. On his Facebook page, there is a picture of the poll results shown for each state.
On which page of TYT did this ad run on? Does anyone know?
Ballot access in all 50 states and DC has only been accomplished by John Anderson, the New Alliance Party, Ross Perot, the Reform Party(with Ross Perot as it’s candidate), and five times by the Libertarian Party. In the two instances where an Independent candidate made all ballots they have been included in presidential debates. Complete national ballot access ought to be an automatic qualifier.
https://medium.com/@Chris_Powell/50-state-ballot-access-should-be-an-automatic-qualifier-for-presidential-debates-34cc8978fe3a#.p8x5rap2z
In 1968 Governor Wallace got on the ballot in all fifty states, however in DC he needed 3,600 signatures and only got 3,000. For the possible debates that year, Humphrey agreed to Wallace taking part and Nixon was opposed. Wallace made a counteroffer. Nixon and Humphrey could have their own two hour debate as long as Wallace got one hour of time the next night to answer the questions from the night before. Once again, Humphrey agreed and Nixon said no. As a result, no 1968 debates for president.
In today’s Los Angeles Times there is a column by Ron Nielsen, campaign manager for Johnson/Weld, in favor of including Governor Johnson in the debates http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-nielson-gary-johnson-debate-20160913-snap-story.html
I certainly don’t disagree that a candidate on all 51 ballots should be in the debates, regardless of poll numbers. But then I believe any candidate on enough ballots to be eligible for at least half (or quite possibly 1/4) of the Electoral College votes belongs in the debates, regardless of poll numbers.
I might consider allowing for half the number of ballots too (26) as another qualifying threshold — right now, that would cover up through the three states with 7 ECs each (CT, OK, and OR) and one of the two with 8 ECs (Kentucky or Louisiana) for a total of 124 EC votes. This could fluctuate from Census to Census, of course . . . the 1/4 standard might be simpler.
And I *might* also consider allowing polls as an alternative path to qualification — that is, if someone hasn’t gotten on enough ballots yet but has a high degree of support in polls that include everyone else who has qualified already or is on track to do so, I might consider including them in the debates as well. In that case, though, not only would the question of poll/media manipulation arise; there might also have to be some consideration given to whether such a candidate would still have enough time to achieve a credible ballot presence.
I would like some people to take my survey at http://waunakeegan.weebly.com/waunakeegan-polling.html to show a accurate showing of the race.
@WaunaKeegan11: I’m not sure this highly technical audience is an entirely representative sample — but I took the survey, and I wish you good luck.
Thanks John.
John Anthony La Pietra, my article is not intending to say that anyone who doesn’t get on in all 50 states plus DC should be automatically excluded. As Michael points out, George Wallace fell just short of that and he’s probably the most successful alternative candidate since TR. But any reasonable person ought to concede that getting on all ballots ought to be an automatic qualifier.
Chris Powell, please re-read my post; I agree with you that anyone on all 51 ballots should be in the debates, and I didn’t accuse you of saying that 51-pickup should be a requirement. I just don’t think that standard is inclusive enough. (And then I went on to look at other possible standards.)
@Krzystof Lesiak: The Johnson/Weld ad appears on page A19 of the edition of the NYTimes that I saw. However, the page placement might vary depending on what region of the country your local edition is printed in.
I tried to take the survey, but it does not work with my tablet