Open the Debates 142
An anonymous user writes, "It's time to let the George W. Bush and John Kerry campaigns know that the American people want them to participate in real, democratic and engaging presidential debates hosted by the Citizens' Debate Commission." Briefly, Presidential debates have been run by the Commission on Presidential Debates since 1988, and the CPD is run by the Republican and Democratic parties, which has resulted in less informative and less watched debates that exclude third parties and anything else that could hurt the two parties. The CDC, in cooperation with Open Debates, is trying to improve the debates by removing the bipartisan control.
"Please do not be shy. Senator Kerry and President Bush are campaigning to be your public servants, and you should not hesitate to remind them of your wishes. Kerry campaign: 202-712-3000; Bush campaign: 703-647-2700. Please call this week! The major party campaigns have assembled their high-profile debate negotiating teams, and they will soon begin debate negotiations. Finally, Open Debates' Executive Director George Farah will be appearing on ABC World News Now tonight (sometime between 1am and 3am EST, for those of you still awake), and on ABC News Now Thursday morning at 6am EST. (They are different programs.)"
Re:And this is an issue because? (Score:3, Interesting)
If noone watches it, then you'll find out about it be reading a summary, which will onclude the good sound-bites, and nothing else, and/or will be filtered through the biases of whomever made the summary.
In other words, it would serve no purpose, other than possibly to let us see which candidate could hold his water longest, assuming no bathroom breaks.
Awesome write-up on the history of the debates. (Score:4, Interesting)
I found this a few months ago and I think it's an awesome little history of how the debates were wrestled from the control of the League of Women's voters. Please read this before complaining about third party candidates entering the debates.
There are more brief histories on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] and Disinfopedia [disinfopedia.org]. If you are at a university with access to bigger encyclopedia that cost money I suggest you poke through the history of the debates on one of those.
The overall lesson you'll learn is that the United States Commission on Presidential Debates is completely unfair to everyone but the two big parties... and how many of us completely agree with either or those?
For those of you who don't like Bush, check here [electoral-vote.com] and notice that all the midwestern states that support him are also the larger supporters of Nader. All those complaints that Nader is taking points from Kerry are self-defeating. Those complaints are just causing the conservatives who don't like Bush to vote for him anyway since they really don't like Kerry and they don't believe there's anyone else available since the other options get downplayed so heavily.
America needs debate reform, and that's a requirement before we'll get more parties.
--Matthew
Re:And this is an issue because? (Score:3, Interesting)
The LAST thing you want is the candidates able to completely dictate the information given to the american public. You WANT the candidates to be asked questions they don't want to answer!! don't you!?!?!?
Re:And this is an issue because? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's two problems with your argument.
First, Jesse Ventura in Minnesota had only 10% in the polls before the debates. He ended up winning the election. I know a Presidential race is different, but it is not as different as you think, because
Second, you do not need 50 percent. You've been misinformed. The last President to get 50% of the so-called popular vote was George H. W. Bush in 1992. You need more than 50% of the electoral college votes to win the election outright, but that's not very interesting either, because that's not a requirement either: if no one gets more than 50% of the electoral college votes, then the House decides the winner from the top three (which is what happened with John Quincy Adams).
Ask yourself: if the top two candidates were all that mattered, why does the Constitution say they choose from the top three? If you're going to argue for a limited number of candidates, it seems the Constitution should guide us, and that the number should therefore be three, not two.
So anyway
zerg (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll tell you what is important: Slashdot interviews. It's shameful that the wankers running this site haven't already solicited slashdotters for +5 insightful questions that they want answers to.
Re:It's about dang time things changed (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly. All this polling percentage crap, and subjective measures of "popularity" need to go out the window. Any candidate who has a mathematical chance of winning, should be in the debates. Right now that would mean, I believe, Bush, Kerry, Badnarik, and Peroutka. Not sure if Nader or Cobb are on ballots with enough electoral votes to have a chance to win. Badnarik is confirmed on enough ballots to have 466 electoral votes available though, so he would definitely be in under this system. Peroutka is on 35 states' ballots, so I *think* he probably has a mathematical chance as well.