Mics won’t be muted for Vance-Walz debate
Daily News Article — Posted on October 1, 2024
(CBS News) – Tonight’s vice presidential debate between Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will feature live mics for the entire 90 minutes, CBS News announced Friday.
The hot mic rule is a departure from presidential debates between former President Donald Trump and President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. In [those debates], hosts CNN and ABC News [decides that] the candidates’ mics would be muted unless it was their turn to speak.
CBS News [announced for tonight’s debate] that it “reserves the right” to mute microphones if producers deem fit.
The Walz-Vance [debate will take place] on Tuesday at 9 p.m. at the CBS’s studios in New York City with two four-minute commercial breaks. Campaign staff are not allowed to interact with the candidates during the breaks.
The debate will be moderated by “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” moderator and chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan.
Other rules for the debate are in line with the two presidential showdowns, including no studio audience, candidates standing up rather than sitting at a table, and no notes allowed. They will be given a pen, a pad of paper and a water bottle.
Each candidate will have two minutes to speak in response to moderator questions and their rival will have two minutes to respond, followed by one minute each for rebuttals. And the moderators may at their discretion give candidates an additional minute each to continue a topic.
Lights in front of each candidate will indicate how much time they have left to speak. The candidates will also each have a countdown clock.
The moderators will be seated and will be the only ones in the room permitted to ask questions.
Vance won the coin toss and opted to give his closing remarks last. Candidates will be given 2 minutes each for closing statements.
Walz will be standing on the right side of the stage as TV viewers see it, similar to where Biden and Harris opted to be placed in previous debates.
There will be no opening statements. CBS has said that no topics or questions will be shared with the campaigns in advance.
Compiled from CBS News with Associated Press.
Background
The Commission on Presidential Debates was established in 1987 as "non-partisan" and had run every presidential debate until 2024. The June 2024 debate between Trump and Biden was the first time presidential candidates bypassed the commission and made their own debate agreement.
Regarding microphones: In October of 2020, after the first debate that year in Cleveland between Trump and Biden included lots of interruptions, the commission decided to mute each candidate's microphone during the other's opening statement at the start of each 15-minute segment of the final debate.
In the June 2024 debate, under moderator CNN's rules, the candidates' microphones were muted every time they didn't have the floor. [The Biden campaign did not want Trump to talk while Biden was speaking.] It was the first time ever the candidates' mics were muted throughout the entire debate.
In another first (with the June 2024 Trump-Biden debate), CNN had two commercial breaks. Before 2024, presidential (and VP) debates ran uninterrupted.
The June 2024 Biden-Trump debate was also the first time a major presidential debate that had no studio audience. Even during the Covid pandemic debates, there were small groups in the room.