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During the current U.S. presidential primary and caucus season both the Democratic and Republican parties, along with the mainstream media, have been applying questionable practices which are largely to the benefit of Senators McCain and Clinton. In the Democratic Party nomination process, Sen. Barack Obama appears to have gained the most support from voters. However, many of the party's nearly eight-hundred "super delegates" (including governors, former officials of various types, senators, congressmen, state party chairpersons, and others) may support Senator Clinton at the convention. Meanwhile, Clinton has tried to take advantage of the early primaries called by Michigan and Florida which other candidates agreed not to campaign in. As for the Republicans, former Governor Mike Huckabee's campaign has complained that McCain was declared the winner by a narrow margin in Washington, but about thirteen percent of the vote was left uncounted. At the same time, numerous so-called "winner take all" states have enabled candidates with less than half of the vote to gain all of the delegates (such as when McCain won in Florida), meaning that the majority of voters are not represented. The mainstream media has taken the worst role in the nomination process. It largely ignored candidates like Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, and Ron Paul from the beginning, and excluded them (or allowed them to say very little) from some of the televised debates. Even when Congressman Ron Paul outperformed other well-known candidates in fund-raising and polls, he received little attention on the evening news or major newspapers. Clinton was promoted as the "inevitable front-runner" for months before the first caucus. Voters should be comprehensively informed about each candidate and truly allowed to choose the presidential nominees, rather than TV "pundits" or party "super delegates". Otherwise, it is quite possible that both parties will end up with candidates which draw little enthusiasm in the general election. |