Focus on Undecided Voters Is Insulting

* When will someone talk about the media’s ridiculous obsession with the undecided voters? Every single news network and newspaper is guilty of this. How can the media be polling these people on “the issues”? If they were voting based on the issues, they wouldn’t be undecided, would they?

Your obsession with the “undecideds” implies that the millions of decided voters who vote their convictions are being held hostage by this uninformed, uncommitted minority of voters who will most likely jump on the bandwagon of the first candidate who gains a sustained advantage in the polls. To say that I am insulted is an understatement.

SAMUEL LOPEZ JR.

Chatsworth

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To American voters who at this point are still undecided: Do the rest of us a favor on election day. Stay home.

MIKE LAMBERT

Woodland Hills

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After all the debating is done, the Democratic and Republican spin doctors have a lot of work to do. It isn’t the campaigns that spin everything. It isn’t the campaigns that raise all of the money. In many ways it’s the political parties that “take care of their own.”

Maybe we should look at a new way of running politics in America. Maybe we need a more democratic method of letting people run for office. Maybe we should abolish political parties altogether so everyone can run as independents.

Too many people see their favorite party’s name on the ballot and simply run down the list of its candidates, voting for each one with no knowledge of the issues. If we get rid of political parties, candidates would have to run and be elected on issues, not labels.

ANDREW PURVIS

Upland

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The widespread dissatisfaction and disinterest in the Gore-Bush debates, coupled with the lowest voter participation of the democracies, fuel the controversy over special-interest (primarily corporate) dominance of our politics and media.

How do other democracies deal with political campaign conflict, and with what effect, measured by voter participation, voter choices and taxpayer costs? In place of debates, Italy offers tax-paid, equal broadcast time for press conferences in which the candidate is interviewed by both friendly and hostile journalists. Other countries also offer publicly funded election campaigns.

The shortcomings of candidate debates and of democracy cannot be effectively addressed without an adequately informed public.

JO SEIDITA, Co-Chair

California Clean Money Campaign

Northridge