Debate Talks Wrongly Exclude Third Parties

To the editors:

I would like to point out an omission in your editorial criticizing the Bush campaign's manipulation of the debate process for political advantage (Editorial, Sept. 13). In fact, both parties use presidential debates and the bipartisan (but not nonpartisan) debate commission to exclude smaller party candidates from the political process. The commission's current criteria for inclusion in the debates is 15 percent support in several pre-debate polls. This makes it impossible for a candidate, without a large amount of money to spend and without the free publicity the major party candidates receive from the news media and from convention coverage, to use the debates to introduce him or herself to the electorate.

Ross Perot was included in the 1992 debates and his participation contributed to high voter turnout and won him some 20 percent of the popular vote. Despite the fact that one in five voters supported Perot in 1992, the Commission kept him out of the 1996 debates--he did not even win a tenth of the popular vote that year. Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura was polling around 8 percent before his state's televised debate--it was his performance in that debate which helped him win the election, gaining around a third of the popular vote.

These examples highlight the important role debates can have in shaping the scope of the political discussion. Any Bush/Gore debate that excludes Green Party candidate Ralph Nader and Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan will be a Democrat-Republican collusion to control the scope of the political discussion in this country. Whatever one thinks of the merits of either minor party candidate, they have exciting ideas which ought to be debated and discussed.

No alternative to the Democrat and Republican parties can emerge in national politics so long as those parties control our access to political discourse via debates.