Letter to the Editor

To the Editor:

The League of Women Voters, which was an independent organization, ran the presidential debate process from 1976 until 1984. Between 1984 and 1988, both the Republican and Democratic parties fought against the League, which insisted on holding the candidates’ feet to the fire, and fighting manipulation of the two parties to gain control of the process. Today, a private corporation created by the Republican and Democratic parties called the Commission on Presidential Debates runs it, which allows those two parties to control the debates.

To quote Dr. Jill Stein: “We’re here to stand ground for the American people, who have been systematically locked out of these debates for decades by the Commission of Presidential Debates. We think that this commission is entirely illigitimate; that if democracy truly prevailed, there would be no such commission, that the debates would still be run by the League of Women Voters, that the debates would be open with the criteria that the League of Women Voters always used, which was that if you have done the work to get on the ballot and could actually win the Electoral College by being on the ballot in enough states, that you deserve to be in the election and you deserve to be heard; and that the American people actually deserve to hear choices which are not bought and paid for by the multinational corporations and Wall Street.”

My own opinion is that both the Democratic and Republican parties are too terrified to have any other party in the debate because of what the American people might hear. If these third and fourth party candidates aren’t allowed to be heard in the debate, they have no chance of winning, and the giant river of sewage composed of both the Democratic and Republican parties will continue to flow and the American people will continue to be the driftwood cast upon the riverbanks. So please don’t tell me you are a Christian and believe the message our Savior brought to this earth, if you can vote for either of these two candidates the Democrats and Republicans have chosen, who, number one, don’t know what that message was, and number two, if they do, they certainly do not follow any of it.

Rose Keast, Red Oak