Presidential Debates Petition

[millwx]

(I both laugh and shudder at the thought of the Prohibition Party participating in a debate), just the serious ones.

I agree, John.  The problem is, I strongly suspect the Prohibition Party candidates will disagree with your assertion that they are not "serious" candidates.  This is the problem I have with such notions of opening up the debates.  Unless there are some restrictions put on, then it will have to be open to every candidate (Prohibition, Green, Libertarian, Reform, Constitution, Socialist, etc, etc, etc).  We'll end up with 20+ people on stage and time enough for one or two questions each.  Completely ineffective.

I agree that our political structure is one that makes third party candidacies more difficult than they should be.  You're goal is a worthy one... making the process more open.  For sure, my personal views are not represented by either the Dems or the Reps (I'm closest to Libertarian, but even they are "off" on some of my views... and there is way too much single issue concentration among Libertarians right now - on gun rights, which I am strongly in favor of, but this focus is drawing some social anti-Libertarians into the fold).  However, the place to try to "fix" the process is not at the Presidential debates level.
Chaos would ensure

[millwx]

I'm more referring to adopting preferential voting or proportional representation.

If my understanding of what you're talking about here is right... I, personally, VERY MUCH like the preferential voting method.  This is the method they use in New Zealand, I believe.

It allows one to vote for a third party candidate without feeling any sort of "pressure" to vote for one of the two main parties.  The "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" argument goes out the window.  The voter votes Nader as first preference, then Gore as second.

In such a system the third parties will have much more success.  Meanwhile, a President will not be elected who represents an ideological minorty, if, say, the 3rd party candidate was more closely aligned ideologically with the other candidate.  In that case, the ideological majority loses.  And before Reps jump up and down thinking that's a backhanded comment regarding Bush not representing the ideology of the majority of the country... lest we forget, many Perot voters in 1992 may well have voted Bush (rather than Clinton) on their second choice.  The knife cuts both ways on this.  Two of the last three elections we have elected presidents representing minority ideologies, simply because of the entry of third-party candidates.  The preferential voting protects against such silliness.