Readers React: Won’t vote for a Democrat or a Republican? Then you don’t count.

To the editor: Ronald B. Rapoport and Walter J. Stone compare the possible effect of Donald Trump as a third-party candidate to the role Ross Perot played in the 1992 election. (“Donald Trump: Like Ross Perot, but worse for the GOP,” Op-Ed, Aug. 17)

While Perot may have drained votes from the Republican Party, a much more serious and tragic result is that the 18.9% of American citizens who voted for Perot were excluded and no longer represented in our nation’s government.

Until the system is changed, we will always face this unfair condition.

James E. Bie, Palm Desert

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To the editor: Odd that you would run an Op-Ed article about Trump’s potential third-party candidacy without mentioning the most successful third-party candidate of modern times: Ralph Nader.

Nader aimed to torpedo the not-left-enough campaign of Democrat Al Gore in 2000, and he succeeded. Nader’s minuscule 2.7% of the national popular vote included enough Floridians to hand the presidency to George W. Bush, who enacted the anti-environment policies that Nader abhorred.

Bart Mills, Manhattan Beach

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To the editor: I am so tired of the media overlooking the fact that Americans still need to vote in the primaries to select the two parties’ candidates. In so many articles, Hillary Rodman Clinton is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee even though we are months away from voting.

The subheadline to Rapoport’s and Stone’s piece is, “Should Trump run as a third-party candidate, he could decide the election for Clinton.” Clinton has not been nominated, and those of us who really consider every candidate in the primaries are tired of the media dismissing our due process as voters by already declaring Clinton the winner for the Democrats.

Let us declare the winner when the votes are in.

Janet Conner, Ventura

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