How the League of Women Voters lost control of the debates

The League of Women Voters used to be in charge of the national presidential debates. Thanks to the Jill Stein campaign, people are talking about that fact again. Its a little detail that the major political parties and the mainstream press has tried to sweep under the rug. Now, we are expected to watch these debates as though they are produced by neutral forces and actually serve as a true platform for debate.

Over the span of time in which the debate was conducted, the League of Women Voters had been pressured in many ways to behave in a less neutral manner. In the 1988 Presidential Campaign, the Bush and Dukakis teams actually sat down together and conspired to remove control from the League. They approached the League with a set of conditions they had secretly agreed upon, and told them that in order to stay part of the debates they would have to agree to all terms.

League president Nancy M. Neuman, made the decision to protest this coup-de-tat, and made the following statement:

"The League of Women Voters is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debate scheduled for mid-October because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter," League President Nancy M. Neuman said today.

"It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and honest answers to tough questions," Neuman said. "The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public."

This was no spur-of-the-moment reaction either. The League was genuinely outraged by this and attempted to raise attention about it through a series of press conferences. In those pre-Internet days, the story died quickly and quietly as the mainstream press ignored it. In a press release, the League of Women voters again called it a fraud.

"Obviously, we have been presented with campaign demands before. We have agreed to some, and we have challenged and negotiated others. But never in the long history of the League of Women Voters have two candidates' organizations come to us with such stringent, unyielding and self-serving demands."

Now those fears have become truth, as the "Commission on Presidential Debates" is a private collaboration of both political parties and it really shows. Populated by party elites; the "Commission" works to keep the questions easy and to keep third party candidates out. They are so intent on this that they locked Jill Stein up in a black site in 2012 for attempting to attend the debates, and despite her credentials to be there for an interview. The "commission" is not a government body, but they still have the power to use the police to remove their political opposition, and that should worry any American.

It is far past time that we demand the League of Women Voters be reinstated as the official organizing body of the presidential debates.