You may recall that one of the big stories out of the first GOP debate (once you’d waded through all of the Trump news from the main stage) was the general approbation received by Carly Fiorina for her performance in the kids table show. In the first full sets of polling after the big event the former HP CEO went from rattling around near the 1% mark to several samples in a row where she scored between 5 and 9 percent. (Her current RCP average is above 6%) That led many of us – including yours truly – to assume that she’d be moving up to the prime time event next month when CNN gets their turn to host.

Unfortunately, as our friend Andrew Malcolm points out today, because of the math that CNN is using, Fiorina may still miss the cut.

Here’s the problem that could adversely affect her campaign in these important early months: CNN plans two separate debates that day, both hosted by Jake Tapper, Dana Bash and radio host Hugh Hewitt.

One would include the top 10 candidates according to an average of 14 national polls (ABC/The Washington Post, Bloomberg News, CBS/The New York Times, CNN, Fox News, Gallup, Marist, McClatchy, Monmouth University, NBC/The Wall Street Journal, Pew, Quinnipiac, USA Today and Time.)

And a secondary debate would present all other candidates registering at least one percent in that same national average. Today, only Jim Gilmore in the field of 17 would not qualify at all.

But CNN intends to take the poll average from July 16 through Sept. 10.

The next debates are hosted by Jake Tapper, Dana Bash and Hugh Hewitt. (Disclosure: Hugh is part of the Salem network.) You can sort of see how CNN would arrive at this decision. There were numerous complaints about using polling numbers as the basis for debate podium ranking in the first place because of their volatile nature this far out from an election and the tiny margins dividing the lower ranked candidates. As we’ve said before, the decision as to who gets the last seat on the prime time stage and who goes to the JV squad could come down to as little as three or four people not answering the phone during a polling cycle. Apparently CNN hoped to mollify some of the critics by getting the broadest, most comprehensive sampling possible among reputable polling outlets. But by going this deep they are counting a large number of samples taken before the debates.

Because of that, Carly is starting with a bunch of those 1% rankings built into her average, potentially lowering her final score to the point where she misses the cut. That just seems wrong to me. They still have time to reconsider this and I don’t understand why they can’t just set the cutoff date as the day after the last debate. That would at least be reflective of how the nation reacted to each of the candidates’ initial introductions to the larger public.

Andrew points to another suggestion which has once again been raised.

Larry Sabato, widely-respected director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, has an alternate idea: Two debates, back-to-back the same evening, both in prime-time, with participants in each selected by lottery that day.

Sabato isn’t the first to suggest this but I don’t see CNN going for it. Personally, it would work fine for me because the nature of my job (and my general, pathetic lack of a life outside this circus) means I’ll be watching them both anyway. But not so for most of America. We’d be talking about anywhere from three to six hours of solid debate coverage, and while Trump may bring the ratings up quite a bit, that’s still an awfully long time to ask the average American to stay focused. Plus, the lottery method completely wipes out any credit that candidates might receive for doing well on the trail and firing up the voters.

If there’s going to be a change, I’d prefer to see what I suggested above. Just average all of the polls they listed, but limit them to the ones taken after the Fox News debate. That still may not be “fair” all the way around, but it seems the least unfair at a minimum.