Good day to everyone there. Thank you for this opportunity. It's a great honour to be discussing this issue with all of you, and I hope this next hour will be a productive one. I have very brief opening thoughts to share, and then I look forward to having the greatest amount of time focused on the questions that are of concern to you.
The Commission on Presidential Debates is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit organization based here in Washington, D.C. It is governed by an 11-person board of directors. We have no ties to the federal government or to any political party or campaigns. We receive no public funding from the government or from party sources. We are not congressionally chartered. We look the way we do in large part because there are rules that are enforced by the Federal Election Commission that govern debate sponsorship during the general election period, meaning the last two months after the nominating conventions.
One rule is that a debate sponsor needs to be either a media organization or a not-for-profit, which is what we are. If you are not, you then are in peril of violating campaign contribution laws. In either case—a media or a not-for-profit—you must have pre-published objective criteria to determine who will be invited to debate. Ours are generally issued one year before the debates. We were started in 1987, and we have both sponsored and produced all of the debates since then. Obviously, there are three very important, large constituencies when it comes to debates. One is the public. Two is the participants. Three is the media that both disseminate the signal and cover the debates.
The commission is here to represent the public. It is obviously a part of doing debates that you need to coordinate and work very carefully with the media, whether it's about selecting dates for the debates, or about their coverage. We work very closely with federal law enforcement. We work with the campaigns. Our main constituents are the public. If the debates do not educate the public and help them make an informed decision on the candidates, they have not succeeded.
All of our debates have been 90 minutes long. In the last four to five weeks of the general election period, they are carried without interruption, commercial or otherwise, by all of the major networks under what we refer to as the White House pool basis. I can comment on this if this is of interest, but essentially it means that the cameras that are in the debate hall are owned by one network. They are putting out a signal that is picked up and broadcast by any member of the pool. It can also be purchased by non-members of the pool for a reasonable fee.
The CPD selects the dates, the venues, the formats, and the moderators, and decides who will participate in the debates. We do not lobby, poll, represent candidates' positions on the issues, or work on any kind of effort that is designed to either encourage people to register or to get out and vote. We have a very narrow charter that was in the original documents filed with the District of Columbia to incorporate the commission in 1987. That really summarizes who we are, what we do, and the way we are organized. I would stop here and welcome your questions.