LNC CHair Nicholas Sarwark
As we ramp up to the 2016 election season, it is a safe bet that there will be even greater than usual acrimony between the political parties, but now there is a rare display of bipartisanship – between the Libertarian and Green parties. The two are putting aside ideological differences and joining forces to sue to break the Republican-Democrat duopoly’s stranglehold on presidential debates.
Though it claims to be independent, the Commission on Presidential Debates was established in 1987 with the blessing of the Republican and Democratic national committee chairmen, and many claim it merely serves the will of the two major parties by excluding third-party nominees from the debates. In actuality, the CPD is “colluding … in order to create a duopoly in which the only people able to compete are the Democratic and Republican parties,” according to Libertarian National Committee Chairman Nicholas Sarwark, who described the debates’ current format and lack of alternate views as “highly staged” and “Kabuki theater.” “That’s just not how American politics should work.”.