Free and Equal is holding a presidential debate in Boulder, Colorado, on October 25. All presidential candidates who are on the ballot before at least 15% of the U.S. voters are invited. So far, Darrell Castle, Rocky De La Fuente, and Gloria La Riva have accepted. Candidates who are invited, but who have not said whether they will attend, are Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and Evan McMullin. See this Colorado news story.
Pure proportional representation (PR) is mathematically perfect and it’s supported by all parties and independents. The 10th USA Parliament has been using it for more than 21 consecutive years and it works fine.
We commend Free and Equal for their work and we extend an invitation to them and everyone to participate with the whole in a new unifying phenomena.
http://www.usparliament.org
Johnson and Stein will probably wait until they’re officially out of the last debate before they accept. So will McMullin, because he’s delusional and thinks he can get in even though he can’t no matter how high he gets in the polls.
Free and equal stated a 10% threshold in a facebook comment. The recent change to 15% of electoral vote barely keeps McMullin while narrowly excluding SWP’s Kennedy. Moving the threshold beyond 50% becomes arbitrary, but the further adjustment shows bias. Why not 20% which would still allow PSL but exclude McMullin. Why not 25% which would exclude all explicitly socialist parties but still include Constitution and Reform/ADP.
It probably made some sort of sense for them to set the criteria low enough to include McMullin, who is getting a relatively large amount of major media attention compared to several candidates who are on the ballot in more states than he is, and may be the most likely of any candidate besides Clinton and Trump to actually carry a state (Utah, where he is within 4% of the lead in the latest poll I saw). It may also make sense to have no more than one explicitly socialist party, since from a non-socialist’s perspective they are two peas in a pod, no matter their technical differences on interpreting Marxism or their personality conflicts. However, thus far it’s backfired, as Johnson is not likely to accept a debate with candidates such as LaRiva, Rocky and McMullin. Stein may not want to either. If they don’t, someone should organize a debate with just Johnson and Stein only. I can’t do it, but I hope someone can and will.
I thought they chose 15% because of the CDP’s 15% rule.
There’s not even a rough equivalence between 15% in nationwide polls and being on the ballot in enough states to be theoretically eligible for 15% of electoral votes.
Supposing Johnson and Stein are waiting until CoPD debate exclusion is official to make alternative debate plans, who may be able to host one without candidates that they themselves may not want to be seen debating?
Democracy Now! comes to mind, as it already extended a similar offer for the first debate.
CNN has had town halls with both Johnson and Stein; would they do a joint one now?
Stossel on Fox Business has had town halls with Johnson and Stein separately as well, so how about jointly?
Russia TV has in the past been pretty open to US third party candidates appearing.
Anyone else?
Does Free and Equal have time to organize a second debate before Nov. 8th?
Last I heard, Stein had agreed to the Texas Tribune debate with McMullin, but Johnson had not yet done so. I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t accept this invitation too.
Apparently there is no Texas Tribune Debate.
That would be news. Where did you hear it? Were reasons given? (Did their lack of objective criteria for whom to invite and not to invite catch up with them, as Richard suggested?)
Johnson will not go. He is apparently too afraid to debate.
John Anthony La Pietra,
Evan Smith, (@evanasmith on Twitter) CEO of the Texas Tribune had twiddled about a conceivable or hypothetical debate. McMullin responded. His tweet formed the basis of the story that Richard Winger linked to.
A couple of days later @evanasmith twiddled:
“THERE IS NO DEBATE. I’ve offered to host one, but I’ve talked to precisely zero candidates. So no one’s been excluded #LetEvanGetBacktoWork”
If you use twitter, I think you should twiddle @evanasmith to find out for sure.
Jill Stein was just on CSPAN with VP Ajamu Baraka. She said something I didn’t quite follow about CSPAN trying to arrange a debate with her and Johnson, but for some reason… could not. Instead, Johnson spent an hour on the program, and then Jill Stein’s hour followed. But CSPAN would be a great venue for a presidential debate.
I want to see Gary Johnson have a marathon campaign tour and come to Missouri to promote his campaign .He need to Campaign at Missouri state university in Springfield Missouri .In the the seventh Congressional district .Ben Brixey.The Libertarian Candidate for Congress in the 7th congressional district needs to campaign to in every county in the district .
People in Colorado should be thinking about Gary Johnson and set all their problems I’m their daily lives .I think about Gary Johnson and the Libertarian party every day sine 1982.
Maybe hypnotizing people into voting third party Candidates should be the solution .
“Candidates who are invited, but who have not said whether they will attend, are Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and Evan McMullin.”
…and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, of course.