The first major debate between the Republican presidential candidates will only feature the 10 candidates polling the best in the five most recent polls that Fox News chooses. Second tier candidates will be invited to participate in a less high-profile forum. The decision announcing candidate selection will be made by 5 p.m. EST on August 4th. Subsequent debates will also only feature the top 10 candidates.

The two tier format and seemingly arbitrary cut-off has sparked some outcry. There won’t be any female candidates in the major forum, since the only female candidate, Carly Fiorina, is polling around one percent. Familiar faces like Rick Perry and Rick Santorum, who were very visible in the 2012 presidential debates, won’t make the top cut either. Using the polls to select the candidates is problematic, since pollsters are increasingly finding that people won’t talk to them, skewing the demographics.

The first debate takes place this Thursday in Cleveland from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. EST and will be moderated by Fox News personalities Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace. The second tier candidates will participate in an hour-long forum beginning at 5 p.m. EST, moderated by Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum of Fox News. In order to make the second tier cut, candidates must have their names currently included by major polling organizations. Originally, they were also required to be polling over one percent, but that requirement has been dropped.

Real Clear Politics is generally considered the authority on tracking major polls. In the last six polls, the candidates have lined up on average from first to last: Donald Trump, Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, John Kasich and Chris Christie. Relegated to the second tier will likely be the next highest polling candidates, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina, George Pataki and Lindsey Graham. George Pataki and Jim Gilmore may not even make the second tier, having been left out of some of the polls.

Since Christie is polling at 3.2 percent and Perry is at 2.7 percent, there is a possibility there could be some last minute shuffling should another poll come out placing Perry ahead of Christie. If the Real Clear Politics average of the last few polls isn’t used as the authority to decide who’s in, there could be even more shuffling around.

Each candidate will get to answer about seven questions for a total of 10 minutes each. The RNC has ensured that many of the moderators are not left-wing journalists, by pairing a more liberal sponsor with a conservative leaning one for each debate.

There are 10 more scheduled debates after Thursday. The RNC insisted on cutting down the number of debates, which seemed overblown at 27 in 2012. The 11 scheduled debates don’t include low-key candidate forums; there have already been 25 of them.

The Commission on Presidential Debates has come under fire recently by a group called Level the Playing Field. Composed of powerful bipartisan campaign strategists, the group has sued the FCC for excluding candidates who aren’t in the two major political parties. LPF wants to modernize the debates, and move them out from under TV network control, where moderators have a lot of power. There is still anger over CNN’s Candy Crowley fact-checking Mitt Romney on Benghazi in the middle of a presidential debate, her leftwing bias painfully apparent.

Even 11 debates is a lot. Considering how volatile the polls have been over the last few months, it might make more sense to allow all of the candidates to participate in each debate for half as much time. Instead of 10 minutes each per debate, give them 5 minutes each. Even many who are not fans of any of the lower tier candidates find it a little funny that, to give just two examples, the only woman in the Republican field, along with a popular three-term governor of Texas, are excluded from all the major debates because of a seemingly arbitrary cut-off point.