by Rvaughn » Thu Sep 22, 2016 9:22 am
I wonder what forum members know about and think of the Commission on Presidential Debates? The Commission on Presidential Debates describes itself as "nonpartisan, non-profit". On the other hand Wikipedia (though not necessarily the most reliable source) says it is "a nonprofit corporation controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties," as well as that it is "headed by Frank Fahrenkopf, a former head of the Republican National Committee, and former [Democratic] White House press secretary Michael D. McCurry." That doesn't sound all that "non-partisan" to me!
I've never paid too much attention until this year, following some of the debate flap regarding Gary Johnson & William Weld, the Libertarian candidates. The Libertarian ticket has made it on the ballot IN ALL 50 states, and is polling fairly well (according to whom you ask). Yet the Commission on Presidential Debates seems determined to shut them out. They say debate participants must be "Constitutionally eligible...must appear on a sufficient number of state ballots to have a mathematical chance of winning a majority vote in the Electoral College, and have a level of support of at least 15% of the national electorate as determined by five selected national public opinion polling organizations..." This last part seems to be where the rub comes in. In the article Conflict of Interest: Debate Commission’s ‘Nonpartisan’ Poll Actually Run by Top Party Consultants, Rodolfo Cortes Barragan writes, "The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) claims that it uses “nonpartisan criteria” to select participants for the presidential debates. However, publicly available information shows that one of the polls used to determine participants, the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, is run by Democratic and Republican pollsters." He further claims, "Nonpartisan voters are systematically under-sampled. And, importantly, the documentation provided by NBC shows that Hart Research and Public Opinion Strategies made no effort to use statistical means to correct for the under-representation of independents."
I know many (possibly most) people seem to be satisfied with a two-party system, but a look from many angles seems to suggest that the system is rigged to always favor the two parties. I guess that shouldn't surprise me.
Totally unrelated (well, not totally), I saw a political cartoon last night that described our choices as "the evil of two lessers."