“Cynthia McKinney, Rosa Clemente, and the Green Party represent millions of voices whose opinions will be excluded from the debates unless they are invited,” said Cliff Thornton, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. “Ms. McKinney is the only woman presidential candidate in 2008. Ms. McKinney and Ms. Clemente are the first US presidential ticket in which both nominees are of African ancestry, and Ms. Clemente is Black Puerto Rican. Ms. McKinney has involved herself personally in the struggle of people in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region to fight permanent eviction and return to their homes — Friday’s debate will take place in Mississippi, a Gulf Coast state.”
“The Green Party and its candidates represent the promise of an anti-war, progressive party that takes no money from corporations — an imperative for America in the 21st century. No other candidate in the 2008 stands for what the McKinney-Clemente ticket stands for,” Mr. Thornton added.
Talking points and background
• The Green Party asserts that voters have a right to know about all the candidates whose names they’ll see on the ballot, not just the candidates approved by the Commission on Presidential Debates or the candidates whose poll numbers declare them ‘winnable.’ Voters deserve to know which candidate best represents their own interests and ideals.
• Cynthia McKinney will be on enough state ballots to get elected to the White House. Any presidential candidate who is on enough ballots to be elected is qualified to participate in the debates.
• When debates are limited to two candidates, the voting public hears only a narrow range of ideas, opinions, and solutions. When presidential debates are restricted to Democrat and Republican, important and popular ideas don’t get discussed — single-payer national health care, rapid and complete withdrawal from Iraq, ending the war on drugs, saving US democracy from a repeat of the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004, impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Without Ms. McKinney, such ideas will be censored from the debates.
• The only valid democratic measurement of public support for candidates is the election. Opinion polls are subjective, vulnerable to bias, constantly fluctuating, and often exclude candidates from the questions asked. Polls are not democratic and should not be used to determine who gets to participate in debates.
• The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), which sets rules for candidate participation, took over the debates from the nonpartisan League of Women Voters after the LWV withdrew in protest of the Democratic and Republican candidates’ attempts to control nearly every aspect of how the debates were to be conducted. The CPD is owned and run by the Democratic and Republican parties, which have an interest in excluding all candidates except their own. The CPD is funded through contributions from corporations, which have their own interests in limiting the candidates who participate in the debates. In an October 3, 1988, press release the LWV called two-party control over the debates “a fraud on the American voter.”
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
