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Tom Perez, the chair of the committee, announced that the party would host 12 debates, with six held next year and the rest in the first six months of 2020. In a switch from the traditional practice of holding nearly all the debates in early primary states, none are scheduled for Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada until 2020.
With nearly three dozen Democrats pondering a presidential bid, party officials anticipate a rush of candidates eager to grab a spot in the nationally televised forums. Depending on the size of the field, the committee may decide to split the debate into two evenings, and would conduct a public and random selection process to determine which candidates speak on which nights.
Perez said the committee had not set a maximum number of candidates who could appear on the stage and is planning for the possibility of a “double-digit field.”
“We will likely have a large field of candidates,” he said. “We expect that large field and we welcome that large field. Accommodating a large field of such qualified candidates is a first-class problem to have.”
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The new process is a direct response to criticism leveled during the 2016 campaign that the committee organized the debate schedule to favor Hillary Clinton, the eventual party nominee. Her two primary opponents, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and the former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, accused the party’s leadership of creating a “rigged” process by limiting the number of debates to six — two of which were scheduled for Saturday evenings and one for a Sunday. Eventually the committee sanctioned four more faceoffs.
In 2020, the committee plans to change the threshold for participation to include factors beyond just the polling number, such as grass-roots fundraising support.
The first debate will take place in June of 2019 and the last in April 2020. The committee will not sanction a candidate’s participation in any other debates, though forums hosted by other groups are permitted as long as only one candidate appears on the stage at a time.
“We want to make sure that the grass-roots have a real say in who our next nominee is,” said Perez. “Grass-roots fundraising is one method of ensuring participation from candidates who may have a different background and profile and base of support.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.