Republican debates

Election season, yay!

Soooooooooooo…… my mind is pretty much active 24/7 and I overthink about everything and I just get all these ideas on how to fix everything from college football to climate change to presidential elections to getting rid of nuclear weapons and so on and so on. I don’t write about like 99 percent of what I think about because I worry about people thinking I’m weird or crazy or something.

Anyways, the other day I saw that the Republican debates will only feature 10 candidates. Obviously the 10 candidates polling the highest. I don’t like the Republicans, they are all sociopaths and death eaters and fascists and stuff but that has nothing to do with why I’m writing this. In a democracy, which the U.S claims to be but really isn’t, it’s not fair that only 10 of the 17 or 18 Republicans get to debate. It’s even less fair that those who get to debate are chosen by polls rather than actual voting. To poll high enough to get into the debates, you have to raise lots of money. I don’t think who gets to debate should be decided by polls and money, so I’ve come up with a democratic way in which all 17 or 18 Republicans get to debate.

Starting five months before the Iowa primary, so like a month from now, there’d be six weeks of debates broken into two rounds of three debates. The first round, all 17 or 18 candidates are separated into three groups of six based off of polling numbers. Each candidate is given a seed number 1-6. Right now, I think Donald Trump, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker would be the three one seeds. The three highest polled candidates are the one seeds, candidates polling 4-6 are the two seeds, 7-9 are the three seeds and so on up to 18. Each debate group has a candidate at each ranking 1-6. All three groups debate each week at the same venues. One group goes on Mondays. Another group goes on Tuesdays and the third group goes on Wednesdays. All the debates would be on FOX of course.

After each debate, everyone goes online to FOX to vote for who they think won the debate and who they think was 2^nd best. You get 24 hours to vote after each debate. The person with the most 1^st place votes gets 12 debate points. 2^nd most 1^st place votes gets 10 points, 3^rd is 8 points, then 6 points, 4 points and 2 points. The person with the most 2^nd place votes gets 6 debate points. 2^nd most 2^nd place votes gets 5 points, 3^rd is 4 points, then 3, 2 and 1 point for 4^th, 5^th and 6^th place respectively. The candidate with the most debate points wins the debate and gets 6 primary points. 2^nd place is 5 points, then 4, 3, 2 and 1 point respectively for 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th and 6^th place. After three debates from each group of six, the four candidates in each group with the most primary points advance to the 2^nd round of debates. The two candidates in each group with the least primary points are eliminated from the Republican primary.

The 2^nd round of debates would then be three groups of four. Mondays – Wednesdays again, with the online voting after each debate. The primary points are wiped clean for the 2^nd round, so the remaining candidates start fresh. Most 1^st place votes gets 8 debate points, then 6, 4 and 2 points. 2^nd place votes goes 4 for the most, then 3, 2 and 1 point. Winner of each debate gets 4 primary points. 2^nd place is 3 points, then 2 and 1 point for 3^rd and 4^th place. After three 2^nd round debates, the two candidates in each group with the most primary points advance to the final field of six, which then forms your Republican primary field for Iowa and the rest of the primary process of determining the party’s nomination for President.

By trimming down the Republican field this way, you truly give all 17 or 18 candidates a chance. With every candidate getting on TV for at minimum three debates, and voters determining who advances by voting on the debate winners, it reduces the need for campaigns to raise outlandish sums of money early on. Instead of polls and the corporate owners at FOX deciding who gets a real chance, the voters determine which six candidates make the final primary field. While the Republicans would surely make a mess of it, at least it’d be democracy in action, kind of. While FOX loses control of who succeeds, since the debates are heavily watched, they’d make lots of money so they should be alright with this idea. So yea, if Republicans want to give all their candidates a fair chance, they should do this. Of course they won’t, because hardly anyone will ever see this since I’m just one person in college who doesn’t have millions of dollars to get on TV to share this idea. And that’s why I don’t like writing out my thoughts because they are just dreams that have no chance of ever becoming reality.