ABC News Announces Details on Third Democratic Debate in Houston

ABC News today announced chief anchor George Stephanopoulos, "World News Tonight" anchor and managing editor David Muir, ABC News correspondent Linsey Davis and Univision anchor Jorge Ramos will moderate the Democratic Debate on Thursday, Sept. 12, and, if necessary, Friday, Sept. 13, on ABC.

ABC News is partnering with Univision on the third debate sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee. The debate will take place at Texas Southern University's Health & PE Arena in Houston.

ABC News' powerhouse political team including chief global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz, chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl, senior White House correspondent Cecilia Vega, senior congressional correspondent Mary Bruce, senior national correspondent Terry Moran, political analyst Cokie Roberts, special correspondent Matthew Dowd, FiveThirtyEight Editor-in-Chief Nate Silver, reporter Rachel Scott and contributors Yvette Simpson, Heidi Heitkamp, Rahm Emanuel and Chris Christie will be on the ground reporting the latest developments from the campaign trail and the candidates and providing analysis before and after the debate.

In order to qualify for the September debate, candidates must cross polling and grassroots funding thresholds. Candidates must receive 2% or more support in at least four national polls, or polls conducted in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and/or Nevada. These polls must be sponsored by an approved organization and publicly released between June 28 and Aug. 28. Any candidates' four qualifying polls must be conducted by different organizations or-if by the same organization-must be in different geographical areas. Candidates must have received donations from at least 130,000 unique donors over the course of the election cycle, with a minimum of 400 unique donors per state in at least 20 states. Qualifying donations must be received by 11:59 p.m. on Aug. 28 for the September debate.

If more than 10 candidates qualify under the rules, the debate will take place over two nights. For the two-night scenario ABC News, in accordance with the DNC, will hold a selection event on Aug. 29 to randomly assign the candidates to each night. The format of the debate will be one minute and 15 seconds for direct responses to questions and 45 seconds for rebuttals.

HOW TO WATCH THE DEBATE: The ABC News Democratic Debate will air live nationally on ABC and Univision (with a Spanish translation) and locally on KTRK-TV. ABC News will livestream the debate on ABC News Live-the network's 24/7 breaking news and live events streaming channel-on Roku, Hulu, AppleTV, Amazon Fire TV, YouTube, Apple News, Facebook, Twitter, and the ABC News site and mobile phone apps. Univision News will also livestream the debate on all of its digital platforms including Facebook, Youtube and Periscope.

To post a comment, you must register and login.