Biden’s campaign proposed that the first debate between the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees be held in late June and the second in September before early voting begins. Trump responded to the letter in an interview with Fox News digital, calling the proposed dates “fully acceptable to me” and joked about providing his own transportation.
The article itself mentions that both campaigns have an issue with the debate commission scheduling after early voting. But let’s assume the AP is not a credible source and didn’t fact check this.
How long before the election does early voting begin? Looks like it’s 50 days in some instances:
https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/early-in-person-voting
So let’s look at how well the commission did in 2020. Election Day was Nov. 3, 2020; 50 days prior was Sept. 14, 2020 and 27 days prior was Oct. 7, 2020.
Based on the schedule here: https://www.debates.org/debate-history/2020-debates/ there were three debates:
So, yeah, not a single one of those dates is before the absolute start of early voting, and two of them are on or after the average start.
Seems like a valid and factual complaint to me.
But you’re acting like the nonpartisan commission picked the dates with no input from the parties…
That people who vote day 1 of early voting aren’t sure of who they should vote for…
And that the parties should be in charge of it, despite the Dems deciding to not declare their candidate till after the deadline to get on some states ballots?
The ones that demanded a state violate their state law to move a primary, and when they wouldn’t removed all their delegates…
You didn’t prove anything about the “late” debates being the commissions decision, or why we should give control to an organization thats clearly terrible about scheduling …
I didn’t set out to prove anything or argue any point other than the complaint about the debates being scheduled after early voting starts are rooted in fact.
In fact, the only thing I really did was provide relevant sources to indicate that, yes, the debate commission has a history of scheduling at times after early voting starts.
But giving control to the parties isnt an improvement…
They can’t even schedule their own events to make sure their candidate gets on the ballot.
In this case, yes it is an improvement, we get 2 debates before early voting is a huge improvement over only 1. Yes, long term I agree with you that I’d rather a 3rd party host the events, but right now for this election it seems they need to get their crap together.
How many people do you think vote early but would be swayed by a debate?
If someone is voting Biden or trump during early voting, nothing is changing that.
The main benefit (at least for Dems) for debates is convincing possible voters to vote.
And again, it’s not like the nonpartisan committee dictates when the debates are, and I’m pretty sure the ones Biden and trump skipped was the first wasn’t it?
Like, I can’t help but think of the trump voters that rationalize voting trump because politics isn’t perfect. They’re not wrong at identifying a problem, but their solution just makes things worse.
Biden and Trump both accepted an invitation to debate from CNN and another from ABC, both within hours of this AP story going live. While you’ve got some valid points here regarding incompetence and mismanagement we’ve seen from the major parties of late, in this particular instance it seems like it worked out.
I’d also like to point out once again that my original comment was not trying to argue whether or not this was a good thing, I was providing a source showing that the debate commission has a long history of scheduling debates after the start of early voting. You even asked for a source on that, hence my reply.