The Debate-Stage Rules Should Be Simpler and Less Easily Manipulated

We have once again reached the silly season of ridiculous presidential candidates making the debate stage and ridiculous arguments being had about who qualifies and who doesn’t. This is a mess entirely of the making of the Republican National Committee in not policing one of the few parts of the process that the formal party establishment is supposed to be able to run for the benefit of the party and its members. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is demanding that his representatives be able to appear at the first debate even though Trump himself is boycotting it in favor of an interview with Tucker Carlson (Fox News, which will control the spin room, should refuse this).

Is Perry Johnson making the stage? It seems so, based on polling at 1 percent in two different state-level polls by the same pollster:

Is Francis Suarez? He says he got to 1 percent in two national polls:

The rules really could and should have been written better. If it were up to me, I’d start with allowing candidates of a certain level of stature to make the first debate stage — not every debate, but the first one — automatically. These would include any current or former Republican president, vice president, or presidential nominee, and any currently sitting and elected Republican governor or senator. These are all qualifications that mark major figures within the party who have proven some level of popular appeal in the past on a statewide or national level. That qualifier would give automatic access to the stage, in this setting, to Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, and Doug Burgum. This is similar to my long-expressed view that the parties should give preference (though not an insurmountable one) to presidential candidates who have a track record of winning major elections on the party’s tickets. The only person this lets onstage who is out of place there is Burgum, but it’s a gesture of respect to North Dakota’s voters to let them put their elected governor (who has won the state by 57 and 40 points in his last two races, respectively) on the stage.

A case could be made for extending this to people elected to those posts within a certain number of recent years — if you set that at five years it adds Asa Hutchinson, or at ten years it adds Nikki Haley and Chris Christie. But that seems unnecessary. Those are candidates who should have some burden of showing that they still have some pull with voters. Haley, for example, has no difficulty in that regard. At present, pending confirmation that Johnson has made it or whether Suarez will, Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy are the only candidates clearly locked in who would not get an automatic bid under my preferred rules.

The polling threshold of 1 percent in two early-state or three national polls is too lenient. First, 1 percent, with rounding (the rules require at least a sample size of 800), is so low that you can bring in somebody at 0.5 percent in two polls of 800 people, which is literally four voters in each poll. Second, allowing polls from just a single pollster to get a candidate on the stage creates some perverse incentives. Individual polling companies, after all, have some discretion over what polls they release, and a number of them do private, paid work for campaigns. It is not that hard for a pollster to release a nominally independent poll — not commissioned formally by a client — favorable to somebody who may have indirect business with the pollster or might become a paying client in the future. I’m not saying that has happened with any of the particular pollsters or candidates here, but it’s a pretty strong incentive for mischief.

A better way to do a polling threshold, which would reduce all of these problems (albeit without totally eliminating them) would simply be to settle on an established provider of polling averages and require candidates to meet a standard of either 2 percent (unrounded) nationally or 3 percent (unrounded) in one of the early states. That is still not a terribly demanding standard, but it ensures that candidates on the debate stage have already assembled a base of support that is more than a rounding error. The bar for staying on the stage can be progressively raised as the process goes on, and incorporate votes and delegates won once the actual voting starts. It appears that the RNC’s rules for the second debate will be more stringent: “at least 3 percent in two national polls, or 3 percent in one national poll and 3 percent in two polls conducted from separate early nominating states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada).”

If these two sets of rules are applied, there is no further need to have a donor threshold, which (as this year’s primaries have graphically illustrated) is a standard easily subject to abuse and manipulation. Donors are good, but at the end of the day, it’s voters who matter. There is also no real point in squeezing candidates for pledges to support the nominee, although a minimum pledge against running third-party is hardly too much to ask.