If you are not at 15% support in the polls four weeks before the election, I think history would show that there is virtually no chance you will be elected by the amount of the American public that would be needed for that. Many of you may be familiar with the experience of the League of Women Voters in 1980 when John Anderson, who had been a member of the United States House of Representatives from Illinois, was running as an independent. He was invited by the league to participate in the first debate with then Governor Reagan. President Carter, the incumbent, declined to participate because he basically said he was not going to share the stage with someone who was not a majority and not a competitive candidate. So the first debate was Mr. Reagan and Mr. Anderson. The league reapplied the criteria after that first debate, and Mr. Anderson did not meet the criteria. The second and only debate between Mr. Carter and Mr. Reagan took place thereafter.
There is always the risk that a candidate who has a great deal of support will decline to participate if they believe that a candidate who does not have a realistic chance of being elected has been included in a debate in the last three to four weeks of the campaign. This is simply the way the commission has done it. There are people who think that it should be much lower, or that it should be based on ballot access and not on percentage support. If a debate sponsor came forth and said they wanted to sponsor debates using different criteria, they would have every right to do that. There is nothing that says that the commission is the only entity that could put forth a proposal, but this is where our board of directors has come out on this issue. It is thoroughly reviewed, by the way, in between every series of debates to see whether it needs to be altered.