by Eli Beckerman, founder and director of Open the Debates.
[Note: this op-ed was submitted first to the New York Times, then the Wall Street Journal, and finally USA Today. None of them decided to publish it, so we decided to self-publish to Medium before the first televised debate.]
“This is the most important election of our lifetime.”
Every four years, some version of this claim is weaponized against voters considering a vote for the candidate they actually like the most.
Instead of acknowledging the deep systemic problems that have eroded both the illusion and reality of U.S. democracy, the political establishment has worked overtime to insulate their brands from accountability to the people.
After Ralph Nader and Jill Stein each won more votes in some key battleground states than the Republican margin of victory in 2000 and 2016, Democrats were infuriated. Nader and Stein both advocated ranked choice voting as an easy solution to this spoiler dilemma. But this common sense fix never saw the light of day because they were excluded from most election coverage and never given a chance to debate their opponents in front of the American people.
In Maine, after a number of gubernatorial elections ended with unpopular winners, voters enacted ranked choice voting in 2016 and continue to protect it from entrenched politicians. Nationally, however, voters and nonvoters have largely thrown up our hands in disgust. Our desires for more responsive and reflective politics and governance feel like pie in the sky, despite overwhelming majorities of the electorate agreeing.
This democracy gap — the gap between what voters want and what we are forced to settle for — is perhaps best seen in the way the 2016 election played out, and the way the 2020 election is unfolding.
In late August of 2016, a poll of 1,000 likely voters by USA Today/Suffolk University showed 76% wanted the fall debates to include Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green candidate Jill Stein. Just 17% preferred closed debates. Yet an unaccountable private nonprofit was intent on shutting them out. The official-sounding Commission on Presidential Debates was created by the Democratic and Republican parties in 1987 to wrest control of presidential debates from the truly nonpartisan League of Women Voters.
Johnson, a two-term Republican governor of blue state New Mexico, came close to the Commission’s 15% polling threshold, reaching 13% as late as September in spite of a relative media blackout. At the time, he was tied for first place with Trump among active duty military personnel. After he famously stumbled on a question about Aleppo, the media were all too happy to swarm. Like Johnson, Stein’s misfires received far more media attention than the substantive backbone of her campaign. Trump, on the other hand, was a self-aggrandizing billionaire reality star afforded all of the media attention he wanted.
Instead of calling out the Commission for unfair practices that do not serve the public interest, the media provides them an air of legitimacy. Even the League of Women Voters has been silent on the issue, despite their powerful statement when they finally backed down in 1988. “The demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter,” they said. “The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.”
Now we have the predictable situation of both major parties playing games with the debates. Trump has publicly battled with the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, while Nancy Pelosi has spoken out against the idea of any debates.
But voters have more than just two options. The Libertarian and Green nominees are on enough state ballots to win the Electoral College. Both the Commission on Presidential Debates and the mass media play outsized roles in determining for voters which of their choices are “viable” candidates. In a democracy, that is the job of the voters.
When Donald Trump was taken more seriously than Gary Johnson because he had an R in front of his name, the media made a subjective determination to tilt the playing field to favor the entrenched two party duopoly. They put their judgment ahead of democratically accountable ballot access laws which, written by the Democrats and Republicans in power, are already exclusionary to begin with.
This time around, with Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen appearing on the ballot in all 50 states and DC, and Green candidate Howie Hawkins on enough ballots to win the election, there is no principled argument to keep them out of the debates. Instead of an intentionally exclusionary 15% polling threshold, the Commission on Presidential Debates should be forced to poll the American electorate they claim to serve on the most obvious question of all: “Which candidates would you like to see included in the fall debates?”
The reason they don’t ask this question is because we already know the answer. Roughly 3 out of 4 Americans want to open the debates to all ballot-qualified candidates. 2 out of 3 want to open up our rigged political system to third party and independent candidates. In a democracy, we would have some agency to do so.
If the 2020 election is such a monumentally important election — and I believe that it is — then we must lean into our best democratic impulses. It is time to put voters first. It is too important an election to repeat the mistakes of the past.