• Green Party: Barring qualified candidates like Jill Stein from presidential debates violates the right of voters to make informed choices

• Jill Stein and Butch Ware ballot access map

• Acceptance speeches by Stein and Ware, videos of state and local Green candidates, and more at the 2024 Green Convention

WASHINGTON, DC — The Green Party of the United States is demanding inclusion of Green presidential nominee Jill Stein and running mate Butch Ware in all presidential and vice-presidential debates before Election Day 2024, beginning with the presidential debate scheduled for Tuesday, September 10.

For immediate release
Monday, September 9, 2024

Contacts:
Gloria Mattera, Green Party Media Committee Coordinator, 202-804-2758, [email protected]
Scott McLarty, Green Party Media Director, 202-878-2112, [email protected]

Green Party leaders said that any presidential candidate who has achieved enough ballot lines to win deserves a place on the debate stage. Jill Stein and Butch Ware are on enough ballots to give them a mathematical possibility of winning a majority vote in the Electoral College, with 396 possible Electoral votes.

Only Kamala Harris (D) and Donald Trump (R) have been invited to the September 10 debate hosted by ABC News in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

"Voters deserve to know about all the candidates they'll see on the ballot, not just frontrunners determined by opinion polls," said Joseph Naham, co-chair of the Green Party. "Denying voters this knowledge prevents them from making an informed decision about who to vote for."

"The major parties don't want voters to know that there's a candidate who opposes sending US aid for genocide in Gaza. They don't want voters to know which presidential nominee has a comprehensive plan to stop climate change — the Ecosocialist Green New Deal — and who has pledged to fight for single-payer universal health care, a minimum wage families can live on, and student debt forgiveness," said Naham. 

Greens said that control by the Democratic and Republican parties over presidential debates, with the complicity of major news media, is one of many ways in which the two major parties have rigged elections and undermined democracy in the US.

Other examples of the erosion of fair and open democratic elections include voter obstruction by Republicans in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 (with evidence uncovered by Dr. Stein of similar Republican election manipulation in three states in 2016); the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in 2010; the Democratic National Committee's violation since 2016 of its own rules of impartiality towards Democratic primary candidates, even barring primary debates in 2024; Trump's fraudulent "Vote Steal" allegations and lawsuits after the 2020 election; and the DNC's baseless lawsuits to remove Jill Stein and Butch Ware from state ballots in 2024 (see Green Party press release, August 29: https://www.gp.org/green_party_challenges_dems_enact_ranked_choice_voting).

"Dr. Stein has fulfilled all the qualifications for participation in the September 10 debate except the requirement of at least 15% in four national public polls," said Green Party co-chair Craig Cayetano. "This requirement uses opinion polls, which often don't mention Jill Stein by name or are biased in their questioning, to rig an election by leading voters to believe there are only two viable candidates on the ballot and all others should be ignored."

"'Who deserves my vote?' is for voters to decide, not opinion polls or news media hosting a debate," said Cayetano.

Since the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), controlled by the two major parties and corporate sponsors, seized control over the debates from the League of Women Voters in 1988, qualifications have been increasingly more restricted, especially after major-party alarm over H. Ross Perot's strong showing in 1992 and Jesse Ventura's 1998 gubernatorial victory in Minnesota.

See "League refuses to 'help perpetuate a fraud'; withdraws from the final presidential debate," League of Women Voters press release, October 3, 1988 (https://www.lwv.org/newsroom/press-releases/league-refuses-help-perpetrate-fraud).

"The only poll that should matter in an election year is the one for all voters that takes place on Election Day. It's infuriating to see broadcasting companies hosting post-CPD debates adopting the CPD's anti-democratic criteria," said Cassandra Lems, co-chair of the Green Party.

MORE INFORMATION

No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates
Book by George Farrar (Seven Stories Press, 2004)

Green Party of the United States
http://www.gp.org
202-804-2758