For Immediate Release: July 19, 2019
Detroit, MI – The Democratic Party’s latest debate lineups for July 30 and 31 arbitrarily shut out five notable voices.
Out of 25 major candidates vying to be the Democratic nominee for president, only 20 will be provided an unparalleled platform to reach potential voters. The party is arbitrarily excluding five noteworthy candidates—former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel; Miramar, FL Mayor Wayne Messam; U.S. Congressman and Marine veteran Seth Moulton; former U.S. Congressman and 3-star Navy Admiral Joe Sestak; and hedge fund manager and philanthropist Tom Steyer.
While the first contest is six months away (the Iowa caucus is not until Feb. 3, 2020), the DNC finds it important to limit the voices of Democratic candidates to 20. They are inserting chance and bias into the process, relying on a 1% polling threshold with polls that have 3-5% error bars.
“Our democratic republic is healthiest with a well-informed electorate,” said Open the Debates founder Eli Beckerman, “and voters deserve to learn about all of their choices on the ballot. They should have the opportunity to hear from all serious candidates for this important office, without interference from the DNC. If the party wants to rely on polls, they could ask who voters would like to see included. The wisdom of democracy is letting voters decide.”
In fairness to the DNC, their objective selection process was outlined in advance, and it is an improvement over their process in 2016 when noteworthy candidates like Lawrence Lessig were excluded in a much smaller field. 25 candidates is, by any measure, a high number of voices to sort through.
But instead of relying on arbitrary, biased, and error-prone tools to cut down this diverse field of candidates, the party could easily create more engaging and inclusive forums that would let voters decide who to cut. They could adopt fairer and more representative ways of tallying voter sentiment like ranked choice voting and approval voting. If the Democrats were as concerned with democracy itself as they are with piling up individual donors who can fund the party apparatus going forward, their process for nominating the Democratic nominee for president would reflect it.
Voters should demand a fairer and more representative process for selecting the next “leader of the free world.”
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