The DNC has been roiled with allegations of unfairness in their primary debate system, and for good reason.

The debate entry requirements, while not intentionally discriminatory, are clearly arbitrary. Every debate has had two qualifying components: an amount of high enough polling and an amount of unique donors. For the first debate, candidates only needed three polls showing 1% national support from approved pollsters and 65,000 unique donors. For the December debate, it’s four polls showing 4% support nationally and/or in select early states (or two showing 6% in early states) and 200,000 unique donors.