ronburgundy
Contributor
That answers your own question. Stein would be bringing up each of those issues if she was fully in a debate with these two, and she'd bring them up even if there was no question about them from the moderator.
How about allowing the minority parties into the debate but allocating questions/time to them based on their support? If you are polling very low you only get to show up for a few minutes, basically as a guest speaker in the debate for your primary issue, and then you're not there for the next segment?
A proposal that no one will agree to.
People can be convinced. It is a possible compromise. If you can't have full participation with minority parties, then this is a baby step.
You could keep the same corrupt failing system you have now, or you could make moves to change it, if not all at once, then a little at a time, through small steps like this.
So long as the debates are created and funded by the parties themselves, the 2 major parties have nothing to gain and can only lose by allowing 3rd parties polling at only a few %. The only solution is, publicly funded debates, but even then there should be requirements to participate based upon existing support in polls. Although a simple absolute minimum makes less sense than a maximum relative difference between the candidates. For example, if there were 4 candidates polling at 20%, 20%, 8%, 8%, with 44% un-decided, then it would make more sense for them all to participate than if it was 40%, 35%, 10%, and 10% with only 5% undecided.
Alternatively, maybe instead of using a simple poll of support, publicly funded survey asks registered voters which 2 or 3 candidates they want to see participate. Each candidate that gets X % of votes participates. The reason to limit each voter to 2-3 choices is that too many people will just say "all of them" regardless of whether some have near zero people likely to vote for them and that turns it into a circus.