The Utah Debate Commission is a private organization of colleges and media organizations, but it is funded by the state government. It sponsors candidate debates. This year, there are no statewide offices on the ballot, so the debates are only for the four U.S. House seats. The Commission sponsors its own polls in advance of its debates. Under the old rules, a candidate needed a showing of 10% to be invited, but the candidate was given the benefit of the margin of error, which is usually 4%. So realistically, a candidate only needed 6% to be invited.

But on August 3, in secret, the Commission changed the rules to ignore the margin of error. The poll had shown Libertarian nominee Mike Stoddard at 6.5% in the Third district race, and independent Steven Burt at 5.7% in the Fourth district race. So under the old rules, they would have qualified, but under the new rules, they don’t. As a result, all four debates (for each of the four districts) only include the Republican nominee and the Democratic nominee.

The Commission meeting that changed the rules left no publicly available documents explaining why the rules were changed. The Daily Herald, the newspaper for Provo, carries this op-ed about the Debates Commission. The author is Barry Short, the Libertarian Party state chair.