After her performance in the “Happy Hour” debate on Fox News, Republican Carly Fiorina’s profile rose from obscurity to top-ten prominence overnight. However, that’s not enough to satisfy CNN.

The rules for the September 16th Republican debate hosted by CNN have left the singular female candidate out of the GOP primary mix once again. Coincidence?

CNN’s formula to establish who will be on the stage two weeks from Wednesday relies heavily on polls from July — prior to Fiorina’s surge.

According to The Washington Post:

“CNN claims it cannot legally change its debate criteria in a way that would allow Carly Fiorina into the debate.”

Carly identified the problem, and offered a simple solution:

“Part of the problem here is there were so many polls in July and so few in August. That’s how they’re putting their thumb on the scale. They could choose to take more polling data…

Polls are a snapshot in time, and we’re having a debate once a month based on a snapshot in time. So it really makes no sense to me why you would average out polls over two months.”

Source: CNN is Locking Out a Strong GOP Primary Candidate. But Is It Just Protecting Hillary?