Third-party candidates to debate on Sunday | by MARIA RECIO, McClatchy Newspapers. WASHINGTON -- Third-party presidential candidates finally will have their own debate: at 8 p.m. Sunday at Columbia University in New York.

The debate, which will be announced Wednesday, will include at least three of the four third-party candidates - independent Ralph Nader, the Green Party's Cynthia McKinney and the Constitution Party's Chuck Baldwin. Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr said he has a scheduling conflict, but debate organizers say he wanted to appear only with Nader. (Democratic nominee Barack Obama and Republican nominee John McCain are also invited.) Nader and Barr are on the ballot in 45 states, while the Green Party is on 31 state ballots and the Constitution Party is on the ballot in 37 states. Nader and McKinney also are on the District of Columbia ballot.

Organizers say the debate is an important exercise in democracy, especially because the debates sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates (the last of which was Wednesday night) exclude candidates scoring below 15 percent in national polls. Nader, the best known of the candidates, has an average of 2.5 percent in recent national polls, according to realclearpolitics.com, while Barr averages 1.5 percent. Nader maintains that if he could get into the debates run by the Commission on Presidential Debates, his numbers would immediately climb because "two-thirds of the people don't know we're running."

"It's a Catch-22."

Nader describes the debate commission as "a two-party dictatorial company that doesn't want anybody else on the stage." The commission, created in 1987, is a corporation headed by two former chairs of the Democratic and Republican parties. But third-party critics of the system recently got some traction: the second of the presidential debates prompted a chorus of criticism of the "boring" format and the lack of follow-up questions. Nader gave the issue more visibility at a rally to open the debates Wednesday night at New York's historic Cooper Union Great Hall, where presidential candidates back to Abraham Lincoln have spoken.

The format for Sunday's third-party debate is still being finalized. It will be moderated by Pacifica radio host Amy Goodman. The issues promoted by the candidates strike a different chord from the major party standard-bearers - all four are against the $700 billion economic bailout and all oppose the Iraq war. In addition, each has his or her own agenda: Nader rails against corporate greed while McKinney promotes environmental causes. The Libertarian Party is a critic of monetary policy and likes to invoke a return to the gold standard. Baldwin of the Constitution Party represents a conservative, small government, anti-abortion party that wants to "restore the government to its biblical foundations."

The third-party debate will be streamed at www.thirdpartyticket.com and will be shown on C-SPAN.

MEASURES WOULD SWELL STATE PRISONS
Adding Space May Top $1 Billion, State Analysts Say

Two dueling measures on the Nov. 4 ballot ask Oregon voters to impose tougher sentences on property criminals and could require the state to spend $314 million to $1.3 billion to build more prison space, state analysts said.

Measure 61, sponsored by former Salem legislator Kevin Mannix, seeks to extend mandatory minimum prison sentences to first-time identity thieves, burglars and drug dealers. It also targets repeat offenders for tougher sentences.

Measure 57, an alternative placed on the ballot by the Legislature, proposes to increase prison terms for repeat offenders but also would require more comprehensive drug and alcohol treatment for such inmates.

Under either measure, Oregon's 14-prison, 13,600-inmate corrections system would swell with more non-violent felons. State analysts project that Measure 61 would increase the prison population by 4,106 to 6,389 inmates by mid-2012.

To house the influx of offenders, the state would need to spend $1.1 billion to and $1.3 billion to expand existing facilities or build new ones, according to state estimates. It also would cost between $522 million and $797 million for operating costs in the first five years. Read More >>>

Blocking the Vote; Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. & Greg Palast | Rollingstone.com October 30, 2008

These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas.

Maez was not alone in being denied his right to vote. On Super Tuesday, one in nine Democrats who tried to cast ballots in New Mexico found their names missing from the registration lists. The numbers were even higher in precincts like Las Vegas, where nearly 20 percent of the county's voters were absent from the rolls. With their status in limbo, the voters were forced to cast "provisional" ballots, which can be reviewed and discarded by election officials without explanation. On Super Tuesday, more than half of all provisional ballots cast were thrown out statewide.

This November, what happened to Maez will happen to hundreds of thousands of voters across the country. In state after state, Republican operatives - the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics - are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states." Read more >>>. see also [Video: Behind the Story With Kennedy Jr. and Palast - at: tinyurl.com/67wcl7]

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