The Federal Election Commission (FEC) recently found that the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) had not violated current rules on access to debates. That was no surprise – when you consider that the FEC, like the CPD, is divided between Democrats and Republicans. It’s a bipartisan, not non-partisan agency.
What was surprising, however, was a joint statement that was just released from two members of the FEC: the chair, Ann Ravel, and a commissioner, Ellen L. Weintraub. These two commissioners voted in favor of opening a rulemaking that would consider, in their words, “whether the existing rules are adequate to ensure that debates are conducted fairly and without a bias against non-major-party candidates.”