FOLLOWING
COURT RULING, CIVIC LEADERS AND ELECTED OFFICIALS CALL ON CANDIDATES TO
PARTICIPATE IN DEBATES PROPOSED BY THE CITIZENS' DEBATE COMMISSION
Open Debates,
Press Release
August 16, 2004
Contact:
Chris Shaw (202) 628-9195
Washington, DC – Today, civic leaders
and elected officials across the country called on President George W.
Bush and Senator John Kerry to participate in the presidential debates
proposed by the genuinely nonpartisan Citizens' Debate Commission and
to reject the presidential debates proposed by the unsuitable Commission
on Presidential Debates (CPD), after a Federal Court on Thursday ordered
the Federal Election Commission to open a full investigation into whether
the CPD acted in a “partisan manner” when sponsoring the 2000 presidential
debates.
On Thursday, August 12, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia,
Judge Henry H. Kennedy, Jr., found that the FEC acted “contrary to law”
in dismissing a complaint claiming that the CPD is a partisan organization
and, therefore, ineligible under federal election law to sponsor presidential
debates. (A copy of the decision can be found at http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/04-731.pdf
) “This ruling casts a dark cloud over the legitimacy of the CPD to
sponsor the upcoming 2004 debates,” said Jason Adkins, co-lead counsel
for the plaintiffs. “It is time for the CPD to step aside and allow a
truly non-partisan organization sponsor the national presidential debates
in accordance with federal law.”
Today,
the truly nonpartisan Citizens' Debate Commission sent official invitations
to the Bush/Cheney and Kerry/Edwards campaigns for the nominees to participate
in five legally sound presidential debates and one legally sound vice-presidential
debate at colleges and universities around the country. The invitations
– available at http://www.opendebates.org/letter.html
– were signed by dozens of civic leaders, including former FEC General
Counsel Larry Noble, Ambassador Alan Keyes, Tom Gerety of the Brennan
Center for Justice, Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich, former
television talk show host Phil Donahue, Jehmu Greene of Rock the Vote,
Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), Bay Buchanan of the American Cause, former
Senator Eugene McCarthy, executive producer of the 1996 presidential debates
Bob Asman, TransAfrica Forum founder Randall Robinson, Tony Perkins of
the Family Research Council, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch, Stuart Comstock-Gay
of the National Voting Rights Institute, Joan Mandle of Democracy Matters,
Norman Dean of Friends of the Earth, former Congressman and chair of the
Center for Voting and Democracy John B. Anderson, Nick Nyhart of Public
Campaign, and Harvard Law professor Jon Hanson.
“For
the sake of democracy and voter education, the nonpartisan Citizens' Debate
Commission must replace the bipartisan CPD, which fails to comply with
federal law and fails to serve voters' interests,” said George Farah,
executive director of Open Debates and a member of the Citizens Debate
Commission.
Since
1988, negotiators for the Republican and Democratic nominees have jointly
drafted secret debate contracts that dictated precisely how the debates
would be run – from selecting who would ask the questions, to decreeing
who would participate. Co-chaired by the former heads of the Republican
and Democratic parties, the CPD implemented and concealed those contracts,
shielding the major party candidates from public criticism. As a result,
the presidential debates have been reduced to glorified bipartisan news
conferences, and viewership has plummeted, with twenty-five million fewer
Americans watching the 2000 presidential debates than watching the
1992 presidential debates.
Aspiring
to reverse the decline in debate viewership, the Citizens' Debate Commission
has invited the major party candidates to participate in debates that
would feature engaging formats, address a variety of pressing national
issues, and include third-party challengers that a majority of eligible
voters want included, if any meet such criteria. The nonpartisan Citizens'
Debate Commission, which has been endorsed by the Los Angeles Times
and other major newspapers, is comprised of seventeen national civic
leaders from the left, center and right of political spectrum, and sixty
diverse civic organizations serve on its Advisory Board.
Copies
of the invitations to the major party candidates are available at: http://www.opendebates.org/letter.html
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