Shawn Griffiths
CHICAGO — Last month, IVN reported on independent gubernatorial candidate Collin Corbett’s exclusion from an upcoming forum that will feature Gov. JB Pritzker and Republican nominee Darren Bailey.
Corbett is one of three names that Illinois voters will see on their ballot this November. However, he did not get an invitation to share the same stage as the major party candidates.
Shawn Griffiths
The forum is scheduled to be hosted by the Chicago television station WTTW on October 13. The reason Corbett is being excluded is because of a second set of qualifications that have nothing to do with making it on the ballot.
Under WTTW's published standards, a certified candidate must receive at least 15% support in an independent public poll conducted after the primary. The candidate must also satisfy at least two additional criteria involving a campaign website, fundraising, and news coverage.
Corbett's campaign told IVN that he has met all of the station's requirements. "They are selectively enforcing rules to shield the major parties and silence Independent voices," the campaign stated.
There is only one poll for the Illinois governor's race. It was commissioned by Chicago News Weekly and conducted by Public Policy Polling. It had Corbett at 6%, below the polling threshold.
Corbett's campaign disputes the independence of the poll, saying the owner and publisher of Chicago News Weekly, Cheryl Mainor Norman, "has been appointed by Pritzker to a salaried position, has taken tens of thousands of dollars from Pritzker and other Democratic politicians, and has contributed to a Democrat."
There is some truth to these claims. The Illinoize reports that Pritzker's campaign disclosed $16,000 in advertising payments to Chicago News Weekly during the 2022 election cycle.
"While the major party candidates call each other names, debate evolution, and fight over which is more extreme, I’m the only candidate providing actual solutions to the problems working families face," Corbett said in a statement to IVN.
"By keeping me off the forum stage, WTTW is depriving the public of hearing plans to lower property taxes, fully fund education, get our state growing again, and raise everyone’s wages."
There was also another rule that stated candidates had to be a member of a state-recognized political party. However, after Corbett’s campaign wrote a letter to WTTW, calling the rule unlawful, the station dropped the requirement.
Corbett also pointed out that WTTW hasn’t always used such criteria. In 2023, the station had 8 candidates for Chicago mayor on the same stage. This year, they had 4 candidates for Chicago School Board president.
In both cases, simply being on the ballot was enough to be invited. But in the governor’s race, things are different.
Getting on the Ballot Is Only the First Gate
Debate sponsors — commissions, TV stations, newspapers, universities, and civic organizations — generally set their own participation standards. These can include fundraising, polling, campaign activity, and media coverage.
Sometimes these criteria serve a legitimate purpose. Some races can have candidates who do little or no campaigning, and too many participants can become unmanageable.
But some rules seen nationwide also create a problem for candidates outside the two major parties.
A Democrat or Republican can gain immediate visibility simply by winning a party nomination. The same cannot be said for independent candidates when they qualify for the ballot. They have to demonstrate visibility before receiving access to the platforms available to build it.
This ends up creating something resembling a political Catch-22: They have to poll well enough to get into debates, but they need access to those debates so voters know who they are to boost their polling.
And the issue is not isolated to Illinois this year.
An Independent in Iowa Takes the Fight to the FEC
In Iowa's highly competitive 1st Congressional District, independent Michael Bridgford has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission over his own debate exclusion.
Bridgford is running against Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Democrat Christina Bohannan.
KWQC and KCRG, both owned by Gray Media, announced that the two major-party candidates will participate in an October 20 debate at St. Ambrose University. They invited Miller-Meeks and Bohannan, but not Bridgford.
The complaint alleges that Miller-Meeks and Bohannan declined an Iowa PBS debate for which Bridgford says all three candidates qualified and then agreed to participate in a separate two-candidate event that excluded him.
When Bridgford called on Gray Media to produce the pre-established standards for the debate, he says the company’s response was that candidates needed to raise at least $1 million in campaign donations by July 1.
Bridgford wasn’t even close, and he alleges that Gray Media knew that and used the information to exclude him. Just like in Illinois, he also alleges that Gray Media markets have hosted debates without such fundraising requirements.
Because this is a congressional race, federal debate rules apply.
The FEC allows broadcasters and certain nonprofit organizations to sponsor candidate debates without the costs being treated as campaign contributions. But there are conditions:
- Organizers must use pre-established, objective criteria to select participants; and
- A general election debate cannot exclude someone solely because the candidate is not the nominee of a particular political party.
The FEC has long given debate organizers considerable discretion over their criteria, and polling and fundraising thresholds have previously been accepted as legitimate measures of candidate viability.
The agency has a history of dismissing or outright ignoring complaints that these requirements, particularly the 15% polling threshold, create an unlevel playing field for candidates outside the two major parties—even when the matter was brought to court.
As of this reporting, the FEC has not taken up Bridgford’s complaint.
Maine Chose a Different Standard
There is a different story playing out in Maine.
Independent Rick Bennett is running for governor against Democrat Hannah Pingree and Republican Bobby Charles. Current polling only has him at 6%, and yet he has appeared on the debate stage.
He joined Pingree and Charles for Maine's first televised gubernatorial debate on October 1. And on Thursday night, Maine Public, the Portland Press Herald and NEWS CENTER Maine are again hosting all three candidates for a statewide debate.
With only three names on the ballot, debate sponsors in Maine have chosen to include all 3 candidates, regardless of their polling or fundraising. Maine voters can watch Bennett answer the same questions as Pingree and Charles.
His inclusion hasn’t bolstered his support. He remains in the single digits. But a debate does not require voters to view every candidate as equally likely to win. It gives them information with which to make that judgment themselves.
Or, at least, that is the stated purpose and goal of election debates, which brings up another side of the problem: Voters across the country are increasingly being denied the chance to see candidates on the debate stage entirely.
Sometimes There Is No Debate at All
In Tennessee, independent gubernatorial candidate David Hatley pledged a combined $1 million to three charities if Republican nominee Marsha Blackburn would debate him and Democratic nominee Jerri Green on October 8.
Green agreed to participate. Blackburn did not. Blackburn has declined repeated debate challenges this cycle and told WSMV that she would not give airtime to Green, whom she described as a socialist.
In this case, the obstacle is not an independent candidate failing to meet a media organization's threshold. It is a major-party candidate hijacking the process by deciding that appearing on the same stage with her opponents is not politically necessary.
In fact, the issue is no longer just insurmountable barriers for independent candidates to clear. It is that debates seem to be disappearing entirely across the US, even among major-party nominees who are letting rally speeches and campaign ads deliver their messages.
A September 25 Axios review of 10 closely watched gubernatorial races found that 5 had no scheduled debates between the Republican and Democratic nominees: Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Ohio, and Texas.
In 2022, just two of the comparable races went without a debate. Axios also found that 3 of 10 competitive US Senate contests — in North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas — had no debate scheduled as well.
Here’s the thing: Independent voters in these states may cast the deciding votes in each contest. The question is, will they be allowed to make an informed decision?
Who Is the Debate For?
The examples out of Illinois, Iowa, Maine, and Tennessee highlight the fact that under the current system there is a difference between qualifying for the ballot and being treated as a full participant in an election.
And while voters help independent and third party candidates with the former, they do not decide the latter.
Debate organizers justify added criteria like polling thresholds and fundraising requirements by saying things like, “If we invite everyone, a forum risks becoming cluttered with candidates who have little support or organization.”
It is a legitimate concern in crowded fields, but what about races in which there are only 3 or 4 candidates?
The question is not whether every candidate who files paperwork deserves unlimited television time. It is whether ballot access is supposed to mean something more than having a name printed on a piece of paper.
Candidates spend months collecting signatures, raising money, surviving ballot challenges, and meeting state requirements to give voters another option. Then, once they succeed, another institution can still decide whether voters ever see or hear from that option.
Making the ballot establishes that a candidate is legally part of the election. The debate-access fight is increasingly about who gets to decide whether voters are allowed to treat them like it.