There’s No Debate About Our Lack of Options
The presidential debates are the grand stage of the election season. Some estimates suggest there may be more viewers tonight than there will be actual voters come November. But polls indicate that many of those watching would prefer another option and will wonder to themselves why the two candidates on stage are the only choices presented to them. The answer is simple: our political system is rigged against choice.
Most of the choice-limiting rules are written into state law. Winner take all elections make “spoilers” of independent candidates and favor a partisan duopoly. Parties that succeed in past elections get automatic ballot access for future elections, eliminating the costly and time-consuming signature gathering processes that plague independents and minor parties alike. And both federal and state campaign finance laws distinctly favor party candidates over independents by allowing parties to spend money on their nominees that would otherwise be illegal.
The “rules” that determine who is allowed to participate in the debates also play a significant role in limiting voter choice both by excluding eligible candidates from the event and by discouraging qualified candidates from running. Only candidates that have the support of 15 percent of respondents in a series of pre-debate polls are invited to participate. While that strikes many casual observers as reasonable, it is in fact a deeply flawed metric.
Voter preference polls only measure the opinions of “likely voters,” and rely on highly subjective models to determine who those likely voters are. Those models differ (and with them poll results), but they share a common feature: they all ignore the opinions of a large segment of the American public who are deemed irrelevant. There’s no way to know with certainty why some people don’t vote, but a process that ignores their opinions can only reinforce whatever disaffection they feel.
The use of 15 percent as a threshold is also unreasonably high, assumes that voter interest in hearing from candidates is finite, and ignores the ways in which access to the debates can skew the results of the poll itself. For reference, the standard used through most of the primaries was 1 percent. Mathematically, the maximum number of people a 15 percent standard would allow into the debate is six, and only if the polls were evenly split. For practical purposes, even three candidates is unlikely, and four almost impossible. Ironically, the more eligible candidates, the less likely any one of them would be to reach the threshold. Why, in a country of 300 million people, do we accept a standard that gives us only two, and possibly three choices, for the most important elected office?
The likelihood of reaching the threshold is itself dependent upon name recognition and attitudes about “electability” that in turn are dependent on access to the debates. It’s hard for many to state a preference for Gary Johnson, for instance, when they don’t know who he or even if he is running. For those who do know him, stating a voting preference may be hard if expectations are that such a vote will be “wasted” because he has no chance to win. Part of that expectation, however, is driven by his lack of access to the debates, as is his ability to raise the funds or attract the media attention that would increase his name recognition. It’s the kind of circularity that makes statisticians cry.
Finally, presidential preference polls fifty days out from an election are notoriously unreliable in part because they ask a hypothetical question. Conjecture about whom one would vote for “if the election were held today” is very different from casting a ballot. The debates themselves are premised on the notion that opinions still have opportunity to shift based on new information.
All of this begs the question: if you’re going to use polling to determine who should appear in the debates, why not just ask people (all eligible voters, not just likely voters) whom they would like to see in the debates? Any eligible candidate who receives the support of a majority of respondents should be invited to the debate. It’s simple. It’s direct. It’s fair. And it opens up opportunity for Americans to hear from more than just the two major political parties.
Tonight’s debate host, the Commission on Presidential Debates, is simply not interested in these objectives. Its name sounds official, but the CPD is a private organization formed in 1987 through explicit agreement between the Democratic and Republican parties to take charge of promoting debates “between the nominees of the two political parties.” Control of the organization is divided among partisans from both sides, and it operates essentially as a vehicle for the parties to negotiate between themselves the terms of debates (or, as the agreement that preceded it’s founding described them, “joint appearances”).
In setting the debate standard, the CPD is accountable to a regulatory agency, the Federal Election Commission, which is similarly bi-partisan (as opposed to non-partisan). The six FEC commissioners, by both law and practice, are also divided equally between Republicans and Democrats. Over the past decade, the agency has become almost completely dysfunctional, a regulatory mirror of the partisan dysfunction in Congress. It’s no surprise, then, that the FEC has consistently failed to find issue with CPD’s standard.
Nowhere in this process is the plurality of Americans who do not affiliate with a political party represented, nor the interests of a majority of Americans who tell pollsters they want another choice. To be sure, there’s no requirement that any candidate debate, but it has become a firmly established expectation in presidential elections. The existence of the CPD insulates the campaigns from the criticism that comes from excluding competitors, and provides for format and moderator guidelines that minimize the risk to both “major party” candidates.
So when you watch the debate tonight and wonder to yourself how we got here, remember that rules matter, and if you want a different result you’ll need to do more than throw a beer can at the TV.
