“You can’t spoil a system that’s spoiled to the core.”
That’s what Ralph Nader said in 2000 when he was labeled a “spoiler” by the political establishment for daring to challenge the Democrats and Republicans who were failing miserably in their job to represent We, the People.
In the last 20 years, this rotten political system has only gotten worse.
Do you think we’ve hit bottom yet? Probably not.
Is there anything we can do to get out out of this mess? Definitely yes.
While presidential campaigns capture the energy and attention of voters, they often leave us feeling powerless to fix a completely broken political system. Candidates that aim to fix the system — think Nader, John Anderson, Ross Perot, Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein — get shut out of the main conversation.
There have been countless efforts to hold the official-sounding Commission on Presidential Debates accountable to the public to produce fair, inclusive, and informative debates. But they are a private corporation created by Democrats and Republicans, and they have the establishment’s blessing to maintain a monopoly on presidential debates.
If we are *ever* going to succeed at opening up the presidential debates to more voices and better choices, we need to do two big things that will take the decision-making out of the hands of some untouchable front-group for the two-party duopoly:
1) We need to organize the 40% of Americans who consider themselves political independents, the 68% of Americans who think we need at least a third major party, and the 76% of voters who want open debates.
2) We need to create a national organization that can build a grassroots, cross-partisan movement to effectively challenge exclusionary debates *everywhere* they occur.
Most voters trust their local media to be fair and objective in their election coverage. But the reality is that across this land, the bipartisan political industrial complex works to control the levers of power, including the organizations that host, sponsor, and broadcast political debates. In fact, the modern political system is designed to keep the voices of the We, the People out of the mix.
When candidates put themselves forward as an option for voters, they *should* be given a forum and a level playing field to get their ideas across. When media and establishment gatekeepers stand in the way of voters trying to get informed about *all* of their ballot choices, you have to ask yourself why. And you have to ask yourself “what am I going to do about it?”
Open the Debates recently got an op-ed in the Nashville daily paper because their mayoral race is a travesty of insider, pay-to-play politics. And here’s the best part — after a whole slew of exclusionary forums, debates, and media coverage, the two most recent forums were open to all candidates on the ballot for Nashville mayor, and the resulting coverage reflected that. In Salt Lake City, meanwhile, when the first mayoral debates were slated to leave out half the field of eight candidates, the candidates themselves (including the frontrunner) protested and the debate hosts relented.
No one other than Open the Debates is looking seriously at the issue of exclusionary debates as it relates to local politics. We know we can win locally. And we believe we can grow this movement from the ground up through local wins and local organizing, in addition to being a national voice for fair, robust, and meaningful debates.
We invite you to join with us. Your donation today can help put inclusive, informative, and engaging debates at the forefront of the reforms that are gaining serious traction like Ranked Choice Voting, Fair Districting, Open Primaries, Clean Elections, and even Proportional Representation: https://secure.democracyengine.com/openthedebates
And it will be matched, dollar for dollar (up to $10,000) thanks to a generous matching challenge. We have ONE WEEK left to meet that target. Let’s do this!
It’s time to #OpenTheDebates & #OpenThePoliticalSystem to #MoreVoicesBetterChoices!
In order to get out of this rotten mess, we need political transformation. More Americans are open to that than at any time in recent history. We don’t have to convince anyone. All we have to do is organize strategically.