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Open the Debates
An anonymous user writes, "It's time to let the George W. Bush and John Kerry campaigns know that the American people want them to participate in real, democratic and engaging presidential debates hosted by the Citizens' Debate Commission." Briefly, Presidential debates have been run by the Commission on Presidential Debates since 1988, and the CPD is run by the Republican and Democratic parties, which has resulted in less informative and less watched debates that exclude third parties and anything else that could hurt the two parties. The CDC, in cooperation with Open Debates, is trying to improve the debates by removing the bipartisan control.
"Please do not be shy. Senator Kerry and President Bush are campaigning to be your public servants, and you should not hesitate to remind them of your wishes. Kerry campaign: 202-712-3000; Bush campaign: 703-647-2700. Please call this week! The major party campaigns have assembled their high-profile debate negotiating teams, and they will soon begin debate negotiations. Finally, Open Debates' Executive Director George Farah will be appearing on ABC World News Now tonight (sometime between 1am and 3am EST, for those of you still awake), and on ABC News Now Thursday morning at 6am EST. (They are different programs.)"
A sentiment which seems to be quite prevalent in this election is that, while people are not enthused about John Kerry, they are voting for him because they don't want to vote for Bush. It's a pretty sad state of affairs when you can't cast a reasonable vote for the candidate who represents your issues, and have to resort to voting against the candidate who doesn't.
Things may start to change if the third-party candidates and independants were given enough media coverage to actually present their views to the public. This simply doesn't happen, but allowing them to take part in nationally televised debates would be a step in the right direction.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
And this is a problem.... why?
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
If noone watches it, then you'll find out about it be reading a summary, which will onclude the good sound-bites, and nothing else, and/or will be filtered through the biases of whomever made the summary.
In other words, it would serve no purpose, other than possibly to let us see which candidate could hold his water longest, assuming no bathroom breaks.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Unfortunately, every debate I've watched (since I hit voting age in 1990) has been nothing -but- attempts at setting up sound-bites. When's the last time any candidate actually tried to show some meat instead of dodging questions? And, hell, the average American voter doesn't seem interested in any answer more than 15 seconds long. Hooray for anti-intellectualism; if it doesn't fit on a bumper sticker, people aren't interested.
I think that the basis of a presidential debate should be viability. If a candidate will be on the ballot in enough states for it to be possible of a victory in the electoral college, then they should be let in. Right now, that includes Bush, Kerry, Badnarik, Cobb and Peroutka. Nader, though well-known, doesn't have a chance at an electoral victory due to ballot access issues.
If a debate stays focused on a few key issues and enforces strict time limits, they should be able to whip through 5-6 big issues in a 2-hour debate.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
first off, the bipartisan (not non partisan) commission has set 15% as the bar for entry to the debates. This is staggeringly beyond any kind of ballot access or entrance requirements in any state. It's also blindingly high for any non major party candidate.
As Jesse Ventura shows, however, if allowed to debate, one can go from below that 15% marker to win an election.
There is no reason why there cannot be multiple debates. There is no reason why any debate should suffer the agreements and back door dealings of the two major players as to format, content, LACK OF FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS, and innumerable other deals made by the D and R coalition here, designed to reduce the debate into a two hour recital of practiced sound bites as it currently is, because the major parties want it that way.
Remember Perot? 3 person or larger debates are doable. Even if we still only had two candidates in the debates, at the very least we could pretend it was a format for real question, answer, you know, DEBATE, instead of a recital on prearranged talking points.
There will be no change until, for some reason, the two major parties both think it's in their best interest. And I can't imagine how that would come about.
Everything in an election of this level is measured by how it will affect the candidate's chances. If the upside of staying away is greater than the downside of attending, then the candidate will stay away, period.
Former CIA Director George H.W. Bush lost, in no small part, because he let Perot go over his head to talk directly to the American people. Armed with the facts, the people voted against Bush Sr. That's called "democracy", the same thing we pay lip service to in Iraq and Afghanistan these days.
Of all his daddy's mistakes, this is the one that former Texas Governor George Dubya Bush won't make again. He knows better than to trust the people to make an informed choice.
And to be fair, I don't see an upside for Kerry, either. The Greens' candidate (David Cobb, dude, NOT NADER!) will be happy to call Kerry to account for his own sins.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
If the minor party candidates want to have a debate then let them. I am sure that CSPAN will cover it and anyone who is interested will watch. But just because Ralph Nader wants to talk to us does not mean that people are interested in listening.
There have been serious third party candidates in the debates. The 5% bar is hardly onerous or unreasonable. Anderson and Ross Perot both managed to qualify and were present in the debates.
What is a much bigger issue is who gets to choose the questions. In a true debate the candidates would face off against each other. Instead the US media insists that it get to ask the questions. It would make much more sense to have the candidates question each other.
If left to its own devices the media will only ask Kerry questions about his service in Vietnam and Bush questions about the Texas Air National Guard. The economy, iraq, health care, education, forget those they won't come up.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I'm just a lowly Canuck, so I can't claim as to have been paying a great amount of attention to what's going on with that smaller country beneath us, but my general impression is that the two US candidates are far more focused on 30 year-old war records instead of things like, oooh, say the economy, or healthcare, or foreign affairs, or education, or...
So, what exactly would they debate?
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
While Kerry is certainly infinitely better than Bush, I think a lot of Democrats are starting to rethink their belief that he was the most electable candidate in the pack--and no wonder, they only listened to him talk for five minutes, with a soundbite or two on the evening news every day.
Sure, I hate the two party system--but that hatred does not extend to two-person debates. I mean, they don't invite every single baseball team to the World Series, do they? It's not fair to rely on the debates at the end of the election season to boost yourself out of single-digit territory.
There are so many problems they are difficult to enumerate. You got some of the big ones.
There's also the fact that because the CPD is bipartisan, it is violating federal law, because contributions are campaign donations.
And the fact that Clinton used his power over Dole in 1996 (dangling the carrot named "no Perot") to actually intentionally hold a debate on the same night as a baseball playoff game, to reduce viewership. Stephanopolous even admitted this was the case later on.
The two candidates actively attempt to swindle you. Call them. Tell them you don't want what they're selling. Tell them you want the CDC to take control this year. It's not too late. The only reason they don't change is because we don't ask them to. If you don't call them, they will -- apparently, rightly -- assume that you don't mind that they are staging the entire affair. The affair should be out of their hands.
The 5% bar is hardly onerous or unreasonable. Anderson and Ross Perot both managed to qualify and were present in the debates.
It's not 5%, it is 15%! Which would exclude Perot in both 92 and 96, and Anderson. Anderson is on the board of the CDC, FWIW.
It also, if applied at the state level, would have prevented Jesse Ventura from becoming governor, as he would not have been included in the debates (pre-debates he was 10%).
And it also means your tax dollars go to candidates (which IS a 5% barrier) whom you're not allowed to hear in the debates.
What is a much bigger issue is who gets to choose the questions. In a true debate the candidates would face off against each other. Instead the US media insists that it get to ask the questions. It would make much more sense to have the candidates question each other.
There is no "true debate," but that said, direct questioning of candidates to each other is one thing many people want. But the candidates negotiate that away, under the CPD. We would have it if the CPD weren't in control. But direct questioning makes candidates look bad, so the CPD and the candidates don't want it.
We need multiple sources of questions:
....").
#1. A popular vote (/. style).
#2. The media's picks.
#3. The candidate's picks. This way they can focus on their strengths or pick at their opponents weaknesses.
I'd even break #1 down by region ("Detroit wants to know
Any other sources of questions?
Commission on Presidential Debates
I found this a few months ago and I think it's an awesome little history of how the debates were wrestled from the control of the League of Women's voters. Please read this before complaining about third party candidates entering the debates.
There are more brief histories on Wikipedia and Disinfopedia. If you are at a university with access to bigger encyclopedia that cost money I suggest you poke through the history of the debates on one of those.
The overall lesson you'll learn is that the United States Commission on Presidential Debates is completely unfair to everyone but the two big parties... and how many of us completely agree with either or those?
For those of you who don't like Bush, check here and notice that all the midwestern states that support him are also the larger supporters of Nader. All those complaints that Nader is taking points from Kerry are self-defeating. Those complaints are just causing the conservatives who don't like Bush to vote for him anyway since they really don't like Kerry and they don't believe there's anyone else available since the other options get downplayed so heavily.
America needs debate reform, and that's a requirement before we'll get more parties.
--Matthew
Direct away from face when opening.
You're an idiot, you have the percentages wrong, but the problem is not that the "US media" insists on being able to ask the questions. They are NOT the ones asking the questions. What we have RIGHT NOW is what you are saying we *should* have: the candidates are working back room deals before the debates to decide what will be talked about.
The LAST thing you want is the candidates able to completely dictate the information given to the american public. You WANT the candidates to be asked questions they don't want to answer!! don't you!?!?!?
again, you show you have no idea what democracy is about. It's not about what high profile candidate we can elect this year. It's about who would be the best candidate for the job.
- democracy.html
Let's point out a few more facts. You don't need 50% to win. You need 50% of the populace who bothers to vote, which is about 40-60% of the populace. So let's be charitable and say you need about 30% to win; IN A TWO PARTY ELECTION.
15% is a very sizable base to start from. Debates can swing entire elections, if they are actually debates, and if they actually have candidates in them.
You seriously need to read this report: http://www.opendebates.org/news/pressreleases/pro
This belief that you only matter if your party can start you off at 30% of polled people or higher is total bullshit man.
Take another look; as the previous poster said, 15% would have eliminated Perot. Perot could have won an election. He was very close to doing so. What more will it take for you to realize that 15% is truly detrimental to democracy?
Take the flip side: what's the worst that would happen if there were more people in the debates? HEY, DEBATES WOULD BE LONGER OR THERE WOULD BE MORE OF THEM, O NOES, I WON'T GET TO WATCH "FRIENDS"!!!!!
Suck it up.
of COURSE they should open up the debates.. why is this even in question? One thing that never ceases to irk me is that the US goes around talking about democracy and how great it is and goes as far as starting WARS in the name of democracy, when they BARELY EVEN HAVE ONE. I'm sorry, but a two-party system is NOT my definition of democracy. Democracy is supposed to represent CHOICE, and when you're forced two choose between the lesser of two evils, in what way does that represent freedom? And as to whether or not it is doable: We have 4-party debates in every election in Canada and although granted the votes usually fall mostly on two of the more prominent parties, at least we give people the option. (Consider that if a party has no voice, it's not really an option, is it, since no one will have any idea what their vote would be representing.) Frankly I was apalled this year in our election debates when I discovered that the Green Party had a candidate in almost every riding, and yet was not invited to the debate. I'm not a Green Party advocate, but I think if you've got something to say, and you're willing to say it all over the country, you should be given a chance to do so. Face it, the "democracy" in the states is nothing more than two huge power groupings fighting over control. It is focused entirely on collecting votes, and has nothing to do with actual issues. It has nothing to do with what's good for the people, which is supposed to be what democracy is all about. The American political system doesn't consider votes the be the expression of peoples' opinions on various issues, it considers them some kind of currency, and the political parties are nothing but profit-centered corporations that use commercialism and subversive techniques to make as much "vote-profit" as possible.
None of the independent parties is even at 5%, and 15% sounds more than reasonable. To win you need 50%. 5% to 50% means increasing your support ten fold.
...
... we know that less than 15% is sufficient to get into the 30% range, that it's possible to get a bump like that. And, we know that the 30% range is enough to become President. So what was your point again? :-)
There's two problems with your argument.
First, Jesse Ventura in Minnesota had only 10% in the polls before the debates. He ended up winning the election. I know a Presidential race is different, but it is not as different as you think, because
Second, you do not need 50 percent. You've been misinformed. The last President to get 50% of the so-called popular vote was George H. W. Bush in 1992. You need more than 50% of the electoral college votes to win the election outright, but that's not very interesting either, because that's not a requirement either: if no one gets more than 50% of the electoral college votes, then the House decides the winner from the top three (which is what happened with John Quincy Adams).
Ask yourself: if the top two candidates were all that mattered, why does the Constitution say they choose from the top three? If you're going to argue for a limited number of candidates, it seems the Constitution should guide us, and that the number should therefore be three, not two.
So anyway
When's the last time any candidate actually tried to show some meat instead of dodging questions?
Last time around.
I write in my journal
Oh my, did someone else just say that? These are my sentiments exactly. I recall seeing Mario Cuomo on CSPAN making the case for multiple debates. I thought it would be a marvelous idea: have the candidates spend some of that TV money and "stump speech" time to instead debate 5-10 times. Each debate could have a different set topic, such as "The Economy", "Healthcare" or "Iraq and the Middle East", along with different multiple moderators each time, some of whom would be experts in the field of discussion. Try as they might, I doubt that either (or any, if we have more than two) candidate could "sound bite" his way though two hours of a single topic. Then again, these guys are masterful spin doctors.
Losers choose to abuse the use of "loose".
No, they aren't. They are masterful spin doctors when they have a captive spoonfed moderator who will not challenge them when they REFUSE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS over and over and over again, spitting out tired, irrelevant rhetoric instead and never getting called on it.
Having a moderator with the balls to call a spade a spade would make a huge difference especially, as you've mentioned, if they are educated in the field being questioned on. I really, really like that idea of set theme debates or a couple of set themes per debate with an open Q and A or "miscellaneous" debate.
If the minor party candidates want to have a debate then let them. I am sure that CSPAN will cover it and anyone who is interested will watch. But just because Ralph Nader wants to talk to us does not mean that people are interested in listening
Nader is debating Badnarik. All others are invited. C-SPAN won't be covering it.
There have been serious third party candidates in the debates. The 5% bar is hardly onerous or unreasonable. Anderson and Ross Perot both managed to qualify and were present in the debates.
The bar is actually 15% which is higher than the 10% required to get on a state's ballot. There wasn't a bar until the League of Women Voters got royally ticked at the CPD and quit hosting their own debates.
When Perot ran in 1992 his May polls showed him beating both Clinton and Bush. Then he dropped out of the race and Clinton's points rose 14 percent while Bush's rose only 3. When Perot re-entered the race he only got 10% on the polls. The Bush supporters saw that Perot's followers had all migrated over to Clinton so they were happy to have him back in the race. The *only* (fact) reason Perot was in the debates at all was because the Republican party needed someone to take votes away from Clinton. He was only allowed to debate on the first of the three debates though. In 1996 Gore didn't have a strong enough position to warrant pulling another Perot so Perot wasn't allowed.
What is a much bigger issue is who gets to choose the questions. In a true debate the candidates would face off against each other. Instead the US media insists that it get to ask the questions. It would make much more sense to have the candidates question each other.
The U.S. media doesn't have any say in the questions. The questions are chosen by a panel of Republican and Democratic party members and are pre-released to the candidates so they can have time to formulate their answers. The U.S. media might be the reason there actually isn't any debating though; debating takes more time than simply issuing statements so it's hard to judge time slots. Also, those audience questions were submitted for approval beforehand, given to the candidates beforehand, and are read from a card live.
--Matthew
Direct away from face when opening.
Well, everyone keeps saying 5%. That's pretty freaking low--a theoretical maximum of 20 candidates.
Okay, I know math, too, and you seem to be claiming that it's *likely* that we'll have 20 candidates, each with precisely 5% of the vote. Huh? Check some actual polls -- once you cut Bush and Kerry voters out of the numbers, you only have somewhere between 3-11% left, including undecideds (most of whom are deciding between Bush/Kerry). In the 2000 election, candidate #3 (Nader) got 2.75% of the vote. Candidate #4 (Buchanan) got 0.42%. So... we're going to get 20 debate candidates? We might not even get 3.
That's why I called straw man. I'm not saying the Democratic primary debates were "imaginary" -- I'm saying it's disingenuous to claim that's what we'll get if we try to make any changes to the current presidential debate system.
It's not unfair that you roar out to the front, what's unfair is that you only had single digits and you expected equal debate time with other candidates running 30, 40, or 50 or 60 percent.
I don't agree, because I think the system's weighted from the start against the smaller candidates (and the debates is finally a place where your facetime doesn't depend on how much you pay!), but I understand your point here.
It sounds like you want a much more complicated, time consuming debate--which is cool, but if that's the case, it sounds to me like all the more reason we need to exclude single-digit candidates.
Well, see above re. the "much more complicated, time consuming" bit... but there are other arguments for the 5% bar. Another poster made a good point that seems relevant here -- your party can get federal money to support your campaign if you got more than 5% in the previous election. If our money is paying for these campaigns, shouldn't we get to hear them speak on even ground, even if only for a couple of hours out of the entire campaign?
You know what? Fuck the debates. They're not important.
I'll tell you what is important: Slashdot interviews. It's shameful that the wankers running this site haven't already solicited slashdotters for +5 insightful questions that they want answers to.
[o]_O
The debates should definately be open to anyone who is on the ballot in enough states to be able to win the election. In other words, if it is possible (not necessarily probable) for them to win enough electorial votes to win, they should be in the debates.
Exactly. All this polling percentage crap, and subjective measures of "popularity" need to go out the window. Any candidate who has a mathematical chance of winning, should be in the debates. Right now that would mean, I believe, Bush, Kerry, Badnarik, and Peroutka. Not sure if Nader or Cobb are on ballots with enough electoral votes to have a chance to win. Badnarik is confirmed on enough ballots to have 466 electoral votes available though, so he would definitely be in under this system. Peroutka is on 35 states' ballots, so I *think* he probably has a mathematical chance as well.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Of course I would. It'd be more important to me than watching six days of the Olympics, and people did that.
Even one full good day with normal breaks would be a plus over what we now get.
+++OK ATH
That he's not doing.
His RNC speech was full of "If you elect me I will do... blah." Count them. There's a lot of them.
Of course, none of his followers (yes, followers... not leaders) are asking why with the chance of a lifetime (a Republican House and Senate) he hasn't told the Party folks to get off their asses and draft some legislation he'll happily sign.
Nope, he doesn't really want to cut taxes, simplify tax law, or any of the other multitude of things prefaced with those words during his speech... OR THEY'D ALREADY BE DONE!
He's either lying or completely ineffective as a leader. Even with the War to run, the Republicans could have proposed massive sweeping changes to Tax law, since that's one of the promises. They haven't.
Of course the real reason it's not getting done is because he isn't in Washington enough to actually work with legislators. Go figure.
+++OK ATH
The reason we have two political parties is to foster the middle path.
Yeah, a great idea, indeed. But, why stop there? Two party system still allows for some dissent and fragmentation! I think that a clearly superior system would be a ONE PARTY system! Then the nation would be united all the time, no dissenting views, no confision, no tiresome politicking!
That's definitely the way to go, right? One nation, one party, one leader? Hmmm... Sounds vaguely familiar...
Actually, in the US system, you need less than that. All you need is slightly more than 50% of voters (40-60% of people) in enough states to win the electorial college. That's to win it outright. A special case arises if no one wins an outright majority of the electorial college.
Here is a link to a good summary of the implications. According to his calculations you can win with less than 23% of the popular vote. And that's votes cast. Precent of population is obviously less. Let's say a the unlikely occurs and there is very low voter turn out in enough states to win, and very high turn out in the other states. This number could theoretically get below 10% of the popular vote (and 4% to 6% of the population) to outright win the election - but it would be highly unlikely.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
The only requirement should be "are you on the ballot in enough states to get the 270 EC votes you need to win". That's the only requirement that matters, and it's the only criteria that should be used. Anything else is just the Duopoly scheming with itself to avoid competition. If they're really as dominant as they appear, why are they afraid?
Constitutionally Correct