A 4th presidential debate? Larry King to moderate third-party candidate forum.

Single-issue candidates, such as the Green Party standard bearer Ralph Nader, “are interesting to academics and politicos, but to few others, including voters,” he says, adding that Mr. Nader got less than 3 percent of the vote in 2000, and no electoral votes. The system is stacked against third-party candidates, he says.

“It is nearly impossible for an independent candidate to get on the ballots in 50 states and to participate in the presidential debates,” he says. In the end,  “third party presidential candidates are like unwanted relatives at Thanksgiving dinner," he adds. "It's a free country, so they get invited to the party, but in the end they don't get to eat at the big boys table.”

"The contest really is between two candidates at this point,” says Norman Provizer, director and founder of the Golda Meir Center for Political Leadership at Metropolitan State University of Denver, adding that he is sympathetic to the desire of the Commission on Presidential Debates to not clutter the stage. “Having ten candidates debating, only two of which are actually viable in the race, would dilute things a lot,” he says.

But a forum for ideas not being heard at the mainstream presidential debates is also valuable, say political analysts. Third party candidates have been active almost from the beginning of the nation, he notes, pointing to the first in 1832. Probably the most impactful, he says, both in terms of ideas and his effect on the election was Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, who ran on the Progressive Party platform after losing his party’s nomination. He split the Republican vote, throwing the presidency to Woodrow Wilson. “But, his ideas such as voter participation, voter referendums, and recalls, all became policy in the US after that.”

The immediate impact of this debate with the four, third-party candidates is to broaden the political conversation beyond the predictable two-party lines, says Catherine Wilson, political science professor at Villanova University in Philadelphia.

A growing number of Americans, now 4 in 10, identify as political independents, according to a 2012 Gallup poll. “The absence of these voices in the presidential debates should give Americans pause, especially since one of the most common reasons to claim independent political status is that Americans tend to espouse a mixture of Republican and Democratic sympathies at the same time,” says Professor Wilson, via e-mail, citing a 2010 Pew Research Center report.

Yet, Americans register little support for these candidates, Wilson says. That's why offering a debate platform to major independent candidates is so important. Debates such as the one scheduled for Oct. 23 address the systemic constraints that would discourage candidates from running for office and helps keep them visible.

"In the end, this debate suggests that third-part candidates are here to stay, she adds.

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