As our school hosts its third presidential debate, it stands to reason that I, the current head of the Students for Liberty, would be expected to opine on the fact that the candidate that I am expected to support has not been allowed to argue in the debates.
The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is a nonprofit corporation that has organized every presidential debate since 1988. In 2000, they set a requirement that for any candidate to participate in their debates, the candidate must be polling at an average of 15 percent in five national polls. While Gary Johnson and Jill Stein have managed to achieve ballot representation in enough states to theoretically achieve 270 Electoral College votes, neither of them has been able to reach that polling threshold.
In the most un-Libertarian move, Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate for the second time in a row, actually sued the CPD along with the two major parties on the basis that their policy was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
Why was this an un-libertarian move? Because the CPD is, first and foremost, a private organization, controlled jointly by two other private organizations (the Republican and Democratic Parties), created with the intention of advancing their interests by providing a platform for their candidates to engage each other. His case was dismissed on a technicality (he sued in a California court, which lacks jurisdiction over the organization), sparing us from what would have undoubtedly been a stupid answer to a stupid question revolving around whether a private organization was acting in violation of one of the most un-Libertarian laws in the U.S. Code.
Some have protested that 15 percent is an unfair or even arbitrary number, as there is nothing particularly significant about that number. After all, the election of 2000 very memorably demonstrated that it is possible to win 48 percent of the popular vote (and beat your opponent’s popular vote count by over 500,000 votes) and still lose.
On the other hand, in the election of 1824, John Quincy Adams won the election with only 31 percent of the popular vote, so one might say that a requirement of less than half that number is more than generous. Others might protest that, regardless, the measures are antidemocratic. But, to a libertarian, the answer to that should be a resounding “so what?”
The debates are not a taxpayer funded affair, nor should they be. Gary Johnson is more than free to participate in any other debate that would have him, like he did in 2012, along with Jill Stein and the then-candidates of the Constitution and Justice parties, when he participated in a third-party debate hosted by the Free and Equal Elections Foundation, moderated by Larry King and broadcasted live on C-SPAN.
If there a law against hosting rival debates, there would certainly be a strong Libertarian case for reform of the hypothetical government-created monopoly. But this is not the case, and many Libertarians must come to accept this.
I am not saying that I personally see it as a good thing that the liberty movement cannot seem to achieve relevance in what is perhaps the last true bastion of human freedom on the planet. In another, better world, its work to coordinate efforts to advance a philosophy of peace and prosperity would be rewarded with universal recognition as a force to be reckoned with on the political stage. But we do not live in that world, and my fellow Libertarians must face the facts, because demanding that an organization lower the bar to accommodate a group devoted to seizing its power is just embarrassing.
Marcel Gautreau is the president of the Hofstra Students for Liberty.
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