The election campaign for Donald Trump has sent a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates requesting the current debate schedule be adjusted to account for the abrupt changes in U.S. voting patterns.
Trump co-campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita sent a detailed letter to Frank Fahrenkopf, Jr. and Antonia Hernandez, co-chairs for the Commission on Presidential Debates and Executive Director Janet H. Brown on Thursday.
"Voting is beginning earlier and earlier, and as we saw in 2020, tens of millions of Americans had already voted by the time of the first debate," the latter began. "Specific to the Commission's proposed 2024 calendar, it simply comes too late."
The American electorate drastically changed their voting patterns in 2020 with a substantial increase in mail-in balloting and a continued rise in early voting. According to the Census Bureau data analyzed by MIT, 46% of voting in the 2020 Presidential Election was by mail-in balloting, more than double the previous election. Only 28% of Americans voted on election day in person.
Wiles and LaCivita noted, by the time the first debate Sept. 16, 2024, is held, over 1 million Americans will have likely voted. By the time of the second debate Oct. 1, 2024, the number of cast ballots increases 225% to more than 3 million. When the final proposed debate is held Oct. 9, 2024, they estimate 8.7 million Americans will have already voted.
The Trump campaign also noted, in 2020, the Commission pivoted to the demands of the Biden campaign starting with the failure to move up the timeline for the debates. The letter continued the Commission went further by failing "to reschedule a debate canceled by COVID-19, cutting off President Trump's microphone over and over in the middle of a debate, and in the case of the first debate, selecting a demonstrably anti-Trump moderator clearly positioned to aid Joe Biden."
Wiles and LaCivita also called for adding additional debates citing the Lincoln/Douglas campaigns of 1858 where the two candidates went head to head seven times in the run for the Illinois Senate.
The letter said Trump will debate Biden "anytime, anyplace, and anywhere — and the time to start these debates is now."