WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party hopeful Jill Stein have failed to quality for the first planned U.S. presidential debate on Sept. 26, the Commission on Presidential Debates said on Friday.

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson is seen during an interview before a rally in New York, U.S., September 10, 2016. REUTERS/Mark Kauzlarich

The commission, citing the averages the various candidates have achieved in selected polls, confirmed that Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton had met the criteria.

It also said that the vice presidential running mates of the two leading candidates were the only two to qualify for the vice presidential debate set for Oct. 4.

The first presidential debate will be held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York and the vice presidential debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.

Using the average of five national polls, Clinton scored 43 percent, Trump 40.4 percent, Johnson 8.4 percent and Stein 3.2 percent, the commission said. Selection for the debates requires at least 15 percent support.

Johnson and Stein were both constitutionally eligible and had ballot access in enough states to theoretically win an electoral college majority, but missed the polling threshold.

Stein’s campaign website said she and her running mate Ajamu Baraka will both attend the first presidential debate, and urged supporters to join them. The campaign said it might ask supporters to attempt to escort the candidates into the debate in an action that “may lead to arrest — it is possible but not definite. There will be actions you can take with us at Hofstra that do not risk arrest.”

The campaign said it is “organizing nonviolent civil resistance training for this.”

Johnson said in a statement that: “I would say I’m surprised that the CPD has chosen to exclude me from the first debate, but I’m not.”

The commission was a private organization created by the Republican and Democratic parties “for the clear purpose of taking control of the only nationally televised presidential debates voters will see,” Johnson said.

The last time a third-party candidate was allowed to participate in the televised debates was in 1992, when Ross Perot met the requirements running as an independent.</s>Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will have the debate stage to themselves at Hofstra University in two weeks.

The bipartisan commission that manages the general election skirmishes said Friday that two third party candidates seeking podiums had failed the qualify for the first match.

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson was once thought to have a shot at reaching the 15 percent threshold in national polls. He came nowhere close in the surveys that were used to determine who made the cut, however, attracting a little more than half of what he would have needed - 8.4 percent.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein was even worse off at 3.2 percent.

The Commission on Presidential Debates said Friday afternoon in a statement that its 'Board determined that the polling averages called for in the third criterion are as follows: Hillary Clinton (43%), Donald Trump (40.4%), Gary Johnson (8.4%) and Jill Stein (3.2%).

'Accordingly, Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Tim Kaine, and Donald Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, qualify to participate in the September 26 presidential debate and the October 4 vice-presidential debate, respectively. '

Those debates will take place at Hoftra, in Hempstead, New York, less than 10 miles outside the Big Apple, and Longwood, University, in Farmville, Virginia.

'No other candidates satisfied the criteria for inclusion in the September 26 and October 4 debates. The criteria will be reapplied to all candidates in advance of the second and third presidential debates,' the statement said.</s>It’s official – Gary Johnson and Jill Stein failed to make the cut for the first presidential debate.

The exclusion is a major blow to the already long-shot bids of Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee, and Stein, the Green Party nominee. The debate would have offered Johnson and Stein the largest audiences of their campaigns.

The Commission on Presidential Debates announced Friday that Johnson and Stein failed to meet one criteria for participating in the debate – receiving an average of 15% support in five national polls.

“… the Board determined that the polling averages … are as follows: Hillary Clinton (43%), Donald Trump (40.4%), Gary Johnson (8.4%) and Jill Stein (3.2%). Accordingly, Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Tim Kaine, and Donald Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, qualify to participate in the Sept. 26 presidential debate and the Oct. 4 vice-presidential debate, respectively,” the board said in a statement. “No other candidates satisfied the criteria for inclusion in the September 26 and October 4 debates.”

Some notable Republicans who have expressed disdain or skepticism of Trump have been calling for the inclusion of Johnson and running-mate William Weld in the debates, including 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.</s>LOS ANGELES — Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein failed to make the cut to participate in the first presidential debate on Sept. 26.

The Commission on Presidential Debates said that only Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump met the threshold for inclusion in the debate. Participants much have demonstrated a 15 percent level of support based on recent polls.

The board of directors of the commission determined that Johnson averaged 8.4 percent and Stein averaged 3.2 percent.

The commission looked at polls from ABC-Washington Post, CBS-New York Times, CNN-Opinion Research Corporation, Fox News and NBC-Wall Street Journal.

Clinton was at 43 percent and Trump at 40.4 percent.

The first debate will be held on Sept. 26 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. Lester Holt will moderate.

The commission said that the third-party candidates may still be eligible for the second and third debates in October if they meet the threshold closer to those dates. The second debate will be on Oct. 9 and the third on Oct. 19 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

In a statement, Johnson said, “I would say I am surprised that the CPD has chosen to exclude me from the first debate, but I’m not. After all, the Commission is a private organization created 30 years ago by the Republican and Democratic parties for the clear purpose of taking control of the only nationally-televised presidential debates voters will see. At the time of its creation, the leaders of those two parties made no effort to hide the fact that they didn’t want any third party intrusions into their shows.”</s>Watch CNN's Brian Stelter's interview with Gary Johnson on "Reliable Sources" Sunday at 11 a.m. ET.

Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein will not participate in the first presidential debate, and their running mates will not be in the vice presidential debate, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced Friday.

The decision means Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump will be the only two candidates on the stage on September 26, and Tim Kaine and Mike Pence, their respective running mates, will be the only participants on October 4.

The candidates needed to make a 15% polling threshold across several major national polls in order to qualify for the debates. The commission determined that the polling averages for the candidates had Clinton at 43%, Trump at 40.4%, Johnson at 8.4% and Stein at 3.2%.

Johnson said he wasn't surprised by the decision to "exclude" him from the first debate. "There are more polls and more debates, and we plan to be on the debate stage in October," Johnson said in a statement. Stein's campaign did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment. The commission said it will review the criteria for the second and third debates in the future, but didn't specify in the release when it would make the announcement. NBC's Lester Holt will moderate the first debate on September 26. CNN's Anderson Cooper and ABC's Martha Raddatz will lead the second debate, a town hall format, on October 9. Fox's Chris Wallace will moderate the third debate on October 19.</s>Hofstra University’s debate stage will be set for only the two major-party candidates later this month, as the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates announced Friday it has excluded Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

That makes the Sept. 26 debate the first head-to-head showdown between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Under the commission’s rules, Johnson and Stein each needed to average at least 15 percent support in the most recent polls of five national polling organizations to be included.

Johnson had been vying for a spot and a Twitter campaign #LetGarydebate has been underway. But, according to the commission, he didn’t come close.

Polling numbers showed Clinton with 43 percent, Trump with 40.4 percent, Johnson with 8.4 percent and Stein with 3.2 percent.

The commission’s criteria for participation will be reapplied to all candidates before the second and third presidential debates, scheduled Oct. 9 at Washington University in St. Louis and Oct. 19 at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.

Johnson, in a post on his Facebook page Friday, wrote, “I would say I am surprised that the CPD has chosen to exclude me from the first debate, but I’m not. After all, the commission is a private organization created 30 years ago by the Republican and Democratic parties for the clear purpose of taking control of the only nationally televised presidential debates voters will see.

“Americans are tired of rigged systems, and the monopoly on debates created by the CPD is a prime and skillfully executed example,” he wrote.

Stein has been pushing to open the debates, organizing a petition drive on the issue.

On her website, she said, “Voters have a right to hear directly from their possible choices for the highest office in the land. These choices should reflect the diversity of American political opinion, and not be restricted to two candidates nominated by establishment parties awash in corporate donations and billionaire support.”

Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine, and Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, qualified to participate in the the Oct. 4 vice-presidential debate at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, the commission announced on its website.

The 90-minute debate at Hofstra, to be held in the David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex on the Hempstead campus, will be divided into six segments of about 15 minutes each on major topics that will be chosen by the lone moderator, “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt. The subjects will be announced at least one week ahead of time.

The commission, which oversees the event, said the moderator will begin each segment with a question. Each candidate will have two minutes to respond, and then may respond to each other. The remaining time in the segment will be devoted to “a deeper discussion of the topic,” the commission said.

Hofstra — Long Island’s largest private university — will become the first school to host presidential debates in three consecutive presidential election cycles.

In 2012, Democrat Barack Obama, running for re-election, and Republican Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, shared the stage. In 2008, Obama, then an Illinois senator, and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona faced off there.</s>DENVER — The commission that oversees presidential debates has invited only Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to the first presidential debate. It excluded two third-party candidates who had hoped the event could help them talk directly to an electorate unhappy with the two front-runners.

The Commission on Presidential Debates said in a statement Friday that Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein were polling too low to qualify for the Sept. 26 event. The commission since 2000 has invited only candidates polling at 15 percent or above in an average of five polls. Johnson was at 8.4 percent and Stein at 3.2 percent.

Johnson, a former New Mexico governor and ex-Republican who is running with former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, has been pushing aggressively to get into the debate. He and Stein could still qualify for the two remaining ones in October if their poll numbers hit 15 percent, but that will be challenging without the national exposure of the debate.

In a statement, Johnson slammed the commission as a tool of the Democratic and Republican parties and vowed to make the October contests.

"The CPD may scoff at a ticket that enjoys 'only' 9 or 10% in their hand-selected polls, but even 9% represents 13 million voters, more than the total population of Ohio and most other states," Johnson said.</s>As it stands, it's a two-horse race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for the presidency of the United States.

And that's too bad, because though they may be their respective parties' nominees, Trump and Clinton are the least popular presidential nominees in modern history. People don't trust Clinton or Trump, but many think they have no other choice but to vote for one or against the other. So far, very little consideration—from the media, the public in general or anyone else—has been given to the next two viable candidates as far as poll numbers go—Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the Green Party.

There are three presidential debates scheduled, the first of which kicks off Sept. 26 on NBC. Only Clinton and Trump have been invited as they're the only two candidates polling above 15 percent nationally, which is the threshold set by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

That threshold should be ignored, at least for the first debate. According to the Los Angeles Times, the 15 percent mark is problematic because the CPD draws that average from five national polls conducted by traditional media outlets that often restrict themselves to head-to-head match-ups between Trump and Clinton, leaving Johnson and Stein out.

"... thanks to the electoral college, our national election is really a series of 50 state contests. A national poll is therefore essentially worthless when it comes to predicting the winner in November," a Tuesday editorial in the Times stated.

According to the CBS News/New York Times poll, on Thursday Johnson was polling about 8 percent and Stein about 4 percent.

Debate organizers need to take a cue from the nominating processes used by Republicans and Democrats and allow more candidates to take the stage. At the very least, Johnson and Stein should be invited to take the stage for that Sept. 26 debate.

It would give voters a chance to hear from candidates other than Trump and Clinton who, to be frank, have done little to inspire the electorate. Why should we just be limited to hearing from them?

Should Johnson's and Stein's numbers not rise to 15 percent nationally after that debate, they don't make the second round. Seems pretty simple to us.

Voter apathy and anger are so high, many have said they will not vote for either Clinton or Trump. If that's the case, we don't see the harm in allowing Americans to the opportunity to other candidates. If nothing else, it allows us to see what else is out there.

The Dispatch Editorial Board doesn't endorse any candidate for president, or any elected office for that matter. What we do endorse is the chance for voters to make an informed choice from a wider pool of candidates than we've been offered, especially when the leading two candidates leave so little to be desired.</s>A day after he learned he would be left out of the first presidential debate, Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson called it “a rigged game” as he campaigned on his platform of social liberalism and fiscal conservatism in downtown Seattle.

Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, held a rally in a packed ballroom at the Seattle Sheraton hotel Saturday afternoon, followed by a fundraiser.

The visit came a day after the Commission on Presidential Debates announced he did not qualify for the first presidential debate — a major blow to his campaign — after he failed to reach the required 15 percent polling threshold. Only Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump will take part in the Sept. 26 nationally televised debate.

“It’s a rigged game, man,” Johnson said in a news conference before the rally. “Democrats and Republicans make up the presidential debate commission, 15 percent is not the law. It’s Democrats and Republicans not wanting a Ross Perot on the stage again.”

Johnson is polling at an average 8 percent nationally, the commission said, although he was as high as 16 percent in a Washington Post poll of Washington state conducted in August.

Before the rally, hundreds of supporters in the ballroom chanted “Let Gary Debate.”

While Clinton is a heavy favorite in the state in November, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won an overwhelming victory in Washington’s Democratic caucuses last spring.

Johnson acknowledged to reporters that he attracts a lot of Sanders supporters, but added, “It’s not a strategy.”

One of those Sanders supporters is Taylor Gonzales, a student at the University of Puget Sound who attended the Johnson rally. He was disappointed that Sanders had endorsed Clinton.

“Find the issue that polls the highest and just go there,” Gonzales said. “I just feel like that’s Hillary’s lifetime M.O.”

Johnson was joined in Seattle by his running mate, Bill Weld, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, as well as by two celebrities with local ties — former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and Drew Carey, comedian, actor and an owner of the Seattle Sounders.

The odds of a Johnson-Weld victory are long, but Weld had little interest in saying which of the major-party candidates he’d prefer to see in the White House.

“We don’t want to argue against ourselves,” Weld said at the news conference. “You can tell I’ve reserved most of my negative comments for Mr. Trump.”

Wearing a Seahawks 12th Man jersey for the rally, Weld criticized Clinton for her support of military intervention in Libya and Syria, but had harsher criticism for Trump, calling his false claim that Clinton started the “birther” movement “a complete lie.”

“The two major candidates, but chiefly Mr. Trump, have succeeded in getting everyone’s teeth on edge,” Weld said. “Donald Trump seems to want to go out and make everybody feel bad about being an American.”

Johnson took the stage and immediately addressed a recent flub — when he asked “what is Aleppo?” in a recent television interview, in reference to the war-ravaged Syrian city.

“I want to start out with an apology on this Aleppo gaffe,” Johnson said. “I care about these issues because I don’t want our men and service women maimed or killed.”

Johnson favors legalized marijuana, same-sex marriage and abortion rights. But he is fiscally conservative — he doesn’t believe there should be a national minimum wage, he wants to replace the income tax with a national sales tax, and says he would submit a balanced federal budget.

“Fiscally conservative, socially inclusive, skeptical of military interventions, regime change, favoring free trade,” Johnson said of his agenda. “Always come down on the side of personal choice. Shouldn’t you and I be able to decide in our own lives?”

He opposes the death penalty and spoke about the racial discrepancies in the criminal-justice system.

“All lives matter, but black lives matter and let me tell you why,” he told the crowd. “If you are white and they take you out of your car, they don’t start shoving you around …”

Johnson wants to abolish the federal departments of Education, Homeland Security, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development.

He touted himself as the candidate most supportive of free trade and the only one who backs the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

He wants an open policy on immigration, saying we should embrace anyone who wants to come here and work. “And building a wall across the border is just nuts,” he said.

Johnson said that he would submit a balanced budget within his first 100 days in office, without raising taxes. That would require slashing about 20 percent of federal spending, a massive cut on a scale not seen since just after World War II. Even the most ardent deficit hawks in Congress have proposed plans they say would balance the budget over a span of five to 10 years, not in one fell swoop.

Johnson said he would look to block-grant Medicaid to the states, “devolve Medicare to the states,” means-test and raise the retirement age on Social Security, and shut down American military bases across the nation and world.

“Can there be reform and can there still be a health-care safety net? Absolutely,” Johnson said.

Pressed by reporters on how he would cut so much, specifically from Medicaid, without taking away health care from people, Johnson was at a loss for specifics.</s>WASHINGTON -- After five years questioning Barack Obama's birthplace, Donald Trump reversed course Friday and acknowledged the president was born in the U.S.

"President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period," Trump said, enunciating each word in a brief statement at the end of a campaign appearance. "Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again."

Trump made no apology for and took no questions after the statement.

But as the GOP presidential nominee put that conspiracy theory to rest, he stoked another, claiming that the "birther movement" was begun by his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

"Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. I finished it, you know what I mean," Trump said.

While the question of Obama's birthplace was pushed by some bloggers who backed Clinton's primary campaign against him eight years ago, Clinton has long denounced the conspiracy as a "racist lie."

"Trump has spent years peddling a racist conspiracy aimed at undermining the first African-American president," Clinton tweeted after his Friday event. "He can't just take it back."

Speaking to an audience of black women in Washington, Clinton denounced the "temerity" of Trump's campaign to make that assertion.

"He is feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country," Clinton said. "Barack Obama was born in America, plain and simple, and Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology."

Black members of Congress held a news conference at the Capitol to denounce Trump immediately after his appearance.

His statement on Friday, in a ballroom at his new Washington hotel, lasted only a few seconds after a lengthy campaign event featuring military officers and decorated veterans who have endorsed him. The major cable TV networks aired the full event live in anticipation of comments Trump had hyped hours before.

"I'm going to be making a major statement on this whole thing and what Hillary did," he told the Fox Business Network. "We have to keep the suspense going, OK?"

For years, Trump has been the most prominent proponent of the "birther" idea. He used the issue to build his political profile, earning him media attention and vaulting him to the front of Republican primary polls in 2011 as he considered running for president. He said that he had hired investigators and that they "cannot believe what they're finding."

But the topic remained a fringe issue within the Republican Party; in 2011, conservatives, including Ann Coulter, now a vocal Trump supporter, called on Trump to stop pursuing the issue.

The Trump campaign had given conflicting signals on the question of Obama's birthplace in recent weeks. Those connected with the campaign -- Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, Trump's running mate; Kellyanne Conway, his campaign manager; and Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Trump adviser -- all recently acknowledged that Obama was born in the United States.

Friday marked the first time Trump himself said in no uncertain terms he was wrong. As late as Wednesday, he refused to acknowledge Obama was born in Hawaii, declining to address the matter in a Washington Post interview published late Thursday.

"I'll answer that question at the right time," Trump said. "I just don't want to answer it yet."

Clinton also seized on the Trump interview during a speech Thursday night.

"This man wants to be our next president? When will he stop this ugliness, this bigotry?" she asked.

Hours later, Trump's campaign spokesman Jason Miller issued a statement that suggested the question had been settled five years ago -- by Trump.

"In 2011, Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate," Miller said.

"Mr. Trump did a great service to the president and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised," he added.

But Trump repeatedly questioned Obama's birth in the years after the president released his birth certificate. In August 2012, for example, Trump was pushing the issue on Twitter.

"An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that Barack Obama's birth certificate is a fraud," he wrote.

Even in January of this year, Trump sounded skeptical when asked whether he now believed the president was a natural-born citizen.

"Who knows? Who cares right now? We're talking about something else, OK?" Trump said in a CNN interview. "I mean, I have my own theory on Obama. Someday I'll write a book."

Obama took the unprecedented step of releasing his long-form birth certificate in 2011, after persistent questions from Trump and others.

On the day he released the document, Obama jabbed at Trump, saying, "We're not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers."

The president on Friday added that he hoped the election would focus on more serious matters and that he "was pretty confident about where I was born."

In her speech in Washington on Friday to the Black Women's Agenda symposium workshop -- before Trump made his statement -- Clinton said that Trump owed Obama and the country an apology and that it was too late for him to walk back what he has done.

"For five years he has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president," Clinton said. "His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie."

She added, "There is no erasing it in history."

The Black Women's Agenda invited both candidates to address its annual conference, but the group's president said only Clinton had accepted.

After both Clinton and Trump spoke, her campaign released a statement calling Trump's remarks "disgraceful."

"After five years of pushing a racist conspiracy theory into the mainstream, it was appalling to watch Trump appoint himself the judge of whether the President of the United States is American," Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said. "This sickening display shows more than ever why Donald Trump is totally unfit be president."

Adding a new face to the current political fray, Michelle Obama on Friday warned young voters against being "tired or turned off" in the 2016 election. She urged them to rally behind Clinton, "particularly given the alternative."

Michelle Obama is emerging as one of Clinton's most effective advocates, especially with voters who backed her husband but are less enthusiastic about his potential Democratic successor.

Friday's rally in Virginia was Michelle Obama's first solo campaign event for Clinton and comes nearly two months after her turn at the Democratic convention. Speaking to mostly students at George Mason University, she repeatedly jabbed Trump without mentioning him by name, declaring that being president "isn't anything like reality TV."

The first lady pointedly called out those who continue to question the president's citizenship "up to this very day." Drawing on a frequently quoted line from her convention speech, Michelle Obama said her husband had responded to those questions by "going high when they go low."

She vouched repeatedly for Clinton's resume and character, urging voters motivated by her husband's history-making campaigns to feel the same way about the first woman nominated for president by a major U.S. party.

"When I hear folks saying that they don't feel inspired in this election, well let me tell you, I disagree -- I am inspired," Michelle Obama said.

Also addressing the youth vote for Clinton was her primary rival, Bernie Sanders. At a Democratic rally in New Platz, N.Y., Sanders stressed that this isn't a year to vote third party.

Mentioning Clinton's name sparingly, Sanders told several hundred voters -- many still wearing gear from the Democratic primary -- that their votes could stop the election of a Republican "who thinks climate change is a hoax."

His comments were in reaction to Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson's candidacy, whose ads have called for challenging the two-party status quo.

"Our economic challenges will be conquered not by force, but by cooperation and mutual respect," Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico, says in one of the ads. "For the independent majority of Americans who feel as I do, I say: Why wait one more day?"

Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, is gradually embracing a role as a critic of the third-party option. As Democrats contemplate ways to tamp down a protest vote for Johnson or for the Green Party's Jill Stein, Sanders is already arguing that anyone who voted for him would set the movement back by voting against Clinton.

In an interview after the rally, Sanders said that Democrats and the media need to focus on Clinton's actual policies more than they have been, in a campaign dominated by back-and-forths about Trump's gaffes.

"This is not the time for a protest vote, in terms of a presidential campaign," Sanders said. "I ran as a third-party candidate. I'm the longest-serving independent in the history of the United States Congress. I know more about third-party politics than anyone else in the Congress, OK? And if people want to run as third-party candidates, God bless them! Run for Congress. Run for governor. Run for state legislature."

He continued: "When we're talking about president of the United States, in my own personal view, this is not time for a protest vote. This is time to elect Hillary Clinton, and then work after the election to mobilize millions of people to make sure she can be the most progressive president she can be."

Both Johnson and Stein have not made overwhelming splashes in national polls.

As such, the commission that oversees presidential debates has invited only Clinton and Trump to the first presidential debate, set for Sept. 26.

The Commission on Presidential Debates said in a statement Friday that Johnson and Stein were polling too low to qualify for the event. The commission since 2000 has invited only candidates polling at 15 percent or above in an average of five polls. Johnson was at 8.4 percent and Stein at 3.2 percent.

Johnson and Stein could still qualify for the two remaining ones in October if their poll numbers hit 15 percent.

In a statement, Johnson slammed the commission as a tool of the Democratic and Republican parties and vowed to make the October contests.

Information for this article was contributed by Jill Colvin, Jonathan Lemire, Ken Thomas and Josh Lederman of The Associated Press; by Maggie Haberman, Alan Rappeport, Nick Corasaniti, Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Jonathan Martin of The New York Times; and by Anne Gearan, John Wagner and David Weigel of The Washington Post.
The Commission on Presidential Debates officially announces the invitation of Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton, and GOP nominee Donald Trump, to the first presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, on September 26. However, third party candidates, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, have not met the criteria, and will not be participants in the debate.