I would count John B Anderson as the first third-party candidate to take part in a debate. He was a Republican who ran as an Independent in the election of 1980 and was allowed to debate with Reagan and Carter although Carter refused to show up during the first debate which is the only debate he took part in.
Why is one of CPD important roles not allowing 3rd parties from debating? That’s a little suspect. Especially when you say the “two traditional parties” the 2 parties we have right now are far from traditional at one point in our government there were up to 6 different political parties holding public offices and guess what in that point in time was when our government actually worked for us instead of the checks and balances system becoming obsolete and no longer does it’s intended purpose due to this bs 2 party system
Yeah the league of women voters had been handling it for some time - the two parties wanted to control the debates and refused to ever participate in debates not controlled by their commission - Perot was the only third party to ever meet their threshold.
Yeah it's one of the most controversial facts about them. After Perot's first entry they didn't let anyone in - they ended up saying you could come if you had 15 percent support or more
Right it would be democrat media trying to play us and try and get people to think that debates are useless… it’s for the swing states so that people who will vote either republican or democrat depending on what they like better how are we supposed to weigh our options without debates
