No matter what state you live in, when you go to the polls on Election Day you will be able to select me, Gary Johnson, as president.

My running mate Bill Weld and I are two well-regarded former governors. We are the Libertarian Party candidates. Our support and name recognition is getting higher, as exemplified by the Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday. It shows our ticket at 13 percent nationally. This poll puts us within the margin of error for obtaining 15 percent nationwide.

This poll further shows, as have other polls, that the majority of Americans want to see us on the debate stage.

Given the political climate of this year's presidential election, Americans are looking for a new and different alternative to the very unpopular Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton candidacies. This is a key reason why I should be permitted on that debate stage with Trump and Clinton: The nation needs to know that there is a credible alternative on the ballot in all 50 states to the polarizing nominees this year from the Republican and Democrat parties.

As the Republican Governor of New Mexico, I vetoed wasteful spending 750 times, cut taxes 14 times, and left the state with new highways, bridges, schools, hospitals and a billion dollar surplus. I did this all without raising taxes.

As the Republican Governor of Massachusetts, Bill Weld cut taxes 21 times and took state unemployment from the highest among the 11 most industrialized states to the lowest. We were both comfortably re-elected – in Democrat states – because we balanced budgets and worked across the aisle to get things done.

This combination of being fiscally conservative and socially inclusive is something that you can't find in either of the other parties – and it is exactly what American voters want.

This year, Bill Weld and I are the six-lane highway down in the middle. The GOP and the Democrats are representing a shrinking number of partisans on the side.

Over the past 20 years, the percentage of independents has gone up 6 percentage points, from 36 percent to 42 percent. The GOP dropped from 30 percent to 26 percent, and the Democrats dropped from 34 percent to 29 percent. This may be one reason why, in 2016, we are witnessing the failure of the two-party system to pick candidates that appeal to the majority. And yet our political rituals treat the two-party system as if it were cast in stone or written in the Constitution. It isn't: There's not one word about political parties in our founding document.

Right now, the problem we face is the Commission on Presidential Debates' potential exclusion of a third podium on the debate stage. The "Commission" sounds like a government entity, but it's not. It's a private charity under 501(c)(3) of our tax code and, by law, it may not "endorse, support, or oppose political candidates or political parties."

By not allowing a third voice on the debate stage, the commission only serves the purpose of the two major parties, not the needs and wants of the American voter. It's an an explicit arrangement between the chairmen of the Republican and Democratic national committees, and has set an arbitrary 15 percent requirement in the polls – although we are now within the margin of error of obtaining this threshold.

Ross Perot managed to get a third seat at the 1992 debate. Perot, you may recall, went on to win 19 percent of the popular vote. But at the time of the debates, Perot was polling between 7 percent and 9 percent. And we are higher in the polls than that.

The electoral college basically makes our election into a series of 50 state contests. A national poll is essentially worthless in predicting November's winner. In addition to polling in the double digits in 42 states, we are at 15 percent or higher in 15 states, and 19 percent or higher in four states.

Here's the proposal that Bill Weld and I have made to the Commission on Presidential Debates: Eliminate the polling threshold for participation in the first debate on Sept. 26, basing your invitations instead on the simple fact of being on every voter's ballot in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.

If, after that first debate and the flood of polls that will immediately follow, we have not achieved at least 15 percent support, the campaign will not object to being excluded from the subsequent debates.