This year we have the largest, most diverse group of presidential candidates I’ve ever seen. They vary from uber-conservative to bleeding-heart liberal and fill the entire spectrum in between. It seems as if there are far too many to fit them all comfortably into the two-party system that we demand. I’m not sure why we limit ourselves to two parties, anyway. It seems like a flaw in our so-called democratic system that allows this limitation. How democratic can our election process be if it forces everyone to choose between one side and the other, when every issue has more than two sides and so many people feel that the truth and the solutions lie somewhere closer to the middle.

Bernie Sanders, who is an Independent senator, knew that he couldn’t go any further as an Independent. If he had any chance at being taken seriously, he needed to run for president on the democratic ticket. Jill Stein, on the other hand, has very similar ideas as Sanders, is the nominee for the Green Party. If you have never heard of Jill Stein or the Green Party, it’s because they receive absolutely no media coverage. Since Stein did not defer to the Democratic Party, she may as well not exist for all of the attention she has received in the news. I mean no offense to Sanders but he doesn’t fit very neatly into the Democratic box that we are used to. He even refers to himself as a democratic socialist, a risk nearly, but not quite, as big as if he had run as an independent in the first place.

It seems to me that regardless of what a candidate wants to call themselves, or what party they choose to run for, they should be given the chance to speak to the American people. In order to facilitate a true democracy, it falls upon the media to offer equal consideration to all candidates, ensuring that voters are truly educated about their options. For this reason, I have decided to dedicate a few lines of this issue introducing the NECC community to Jill Stein, and the Green Party.