“We can help Green getting debate access by registering Green Party. If enough ppl registered as Green, the duopoly would have to include Green candidates.”
This is a comment I saw on a video featuring Dr. Jill Stein talking about her 2024 presidential campaign. I don’t know if this person is a Green Party member or not. I can tell you that I am not. I would register as Green if it was possible in my state, I have read the Green Party platform and do support both the platform and Dr. Stein, should she receive the Green Party nomination. That said, the comment above is not true. Yes, people should join the Green Party, as it will help grow an independent left movement. But it’s a common misconception that the Commission on Presidential Debates has to do anything.
To get a good read on the challenges of getting into the debates, let’s take a look at the history of the CPC. The Commission on Presidential Debates was founded in 1987 by Paul Kirk and Frank Fahrenkopf, who at the time were chairmen of the DNC (Democratic National Committee) and RNC (Republican National Committee). In statements to the New York Times, Fahrenkopf said that the newly formed CPC…”was not likely to look with favor on including third-party candidates in the debates”, while Kirk said that he personally believed they should exclude third-party candidates because “as a party chairman, it’s my responsibility to strengthen the two-party system”. So, from the very beginning, the CPD was explicitly opposed to the inclusion of third parties in favor of their own parties. Previously, the debates were sponsored by the League of Women Voters, who declined to participate further in the sponsorship of the debates due to demands made by the two parties to dictate the non-negotiable conditions of the debates. In 1988, they stated in their press release, “The League of Women Voters is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debates…because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. It has become clear to us that the candidates’ organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.” (Read the rest of the statement to see further comments made by the LWV).
In 1992, independent candidate Ross Perot was included in the presidential debates. But after having received 18.9% of the vote, he was purposely excluded from the debates in 1996. While the CPD had included Perot in the previous election with polling percentages of between 7-9%, after his surprise showing, the CPD decided to exclude Mr. Perot in a deal between the two parties. Perot’s campaign and the Natural Law Party filed lawsuits against the CPD. Among the allegations were that the CPD violated the law by selecting only the two major parties’ political candidates and that the CPD had violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights under the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Among the remedies sought were the inclusion of the Reform Party candidates (Mr. Perot’s ticket’s suit) and to enter a temporary restraining order and issue preliminary and permanent injunctions, preventing the CPD from staging the debates unless it selected debate participants using pre-existing, objective criteria and provided the court with a list of those criteria; or, in the alternative, to order the FEC, prior to the debates, to take action on the administrative complaint that contended that the CPD had violated FEC regulations (The NLP’s suit). The court combined the two suits and dismissed them both. Both the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the Appeals Court refused to recognize that any real harm was done to either party, as well as ruling that the court did not have jurisdiction to adjudicate the matter. The Appeals Court also stated that if it were to enjoin the CPD from carrying off the debates or selecting participants, it might risk violating the CPD’s First Amendment rights. They were more worried about the rights of the organization than of the individuals. In the subsequent election of 2000, the major parties decided to raise the percentages of third parties on the eve of the election to 15%. If this rule had been in effect in the 1992 election, Perot would have been excluded, although he ended up garnering 19% of the vote. Mr. Perot was the last third party candidate to participate in presidential election debates.
In the 2000 general election, seven candidates were on enough ballots to mathematically win the electoral college:
- Bush-R 50 states + DC
- Gore-D 50 states + DC
- Harry Brown-L 49 states + DC
- Pat Buchanan Reform Party, 49 states
- Ralph Nader Green Party, 43 states + DC
- Howard Phillips Constitution Party, 41 states
- John Hagelin Natural Law Party, 38 states
Only the major party candidates were permitted to debate.
Similar results were handed down in two administrative complaints filed with the FEC in 2014 and 2015 by Level the Playing Field and its CEO, Dr. Peter Ackerman, the Green Party of the United States, and the Libertarian National Committee. The complaint included allegations that the Commission on Presidential Debates violated the debate staging provisions and a request for rule making claiming the use of a polling threshold is subjective and intended to exclude third party candidates. The FEC summarily dismissed their complaint and refused the request for rulemaking. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that the FEC was not clear on the legal standard they used to reach their determination and referred the complaint back to the FEC, which (surprise) once again dismissed the complaints and still refused the rulemaking request.
In addition to the shenanigans by the FEC and the CPD, third parties are also on the losing end of laws passed by (you guessed it) the two major parties in Congress. Take, for example, the 2002 McCain-Feingold law. This law prohibits national parties from raising or spending money on state and local elections (though since Citizens United, the dark money flows like a fountain to major party campaigns). While this is really not a problem for the Democrats and Republicans because they have candidates on every ballot in every state and can handle raising money in-state, as well as many donors nationwide, this is not so for third parties. Small party candidates that regularly lack funds cannot get the money to run from their affiliated national party and cannot count on donors to make up the difference. This is even more of a problem for a party that doesn’t accept corporate donations (like the Green Party). Also, mainstream media is complicit in keeping third parties from getting their ideas and platforms before the American people, making an appearance in the debates even more important, and the stranglehold the major parties have on that arena all the more damaging. The courts, media, Congress, and party committees are all aligned against independent parties. It’s going to take a lot more to get an independent candidate on national debates than getting people to register with third parties, though party membership is important in other ways and definitely worth pursuing. In some states, party membership plays an important part in gaining or keeping ballot access. Just don’t labor with the misconception that party membership alone will force the duopoly to include third parties in national debate. That couldn’t be further from the truth.1
- Originally posted on Static Quo, The Constant Skeptic Blog ↩︎
