Tell the League of Women Voters to include Peter Camejo in the Gubernatorial Debates!

Tell the League of Women Voters to include Peter Camejo in the Gubernatorial Debates!

The League of Women Voters will decide very soon who will be included in the general election gubernatorial debates.

We need your help in assuring that Peter is included in those debates. Peter has published an open letter to the League of Women Voters which we ask that you use in contacting your local LWV chapter (http://ca.lwv.org/lwvc/aboutlwvc/lllookup.html). Please do it today!

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Camejo for Governor 2006
1710 Broadway #122,
Sacramento CA 95818

June 29, 2006

Roberta Davis
Chair, League of Women Voters Of California Education Fund
801 12th St
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Roberta Davis,

Lynda Hernandez forwarded to me your email explaining the criteria the League of Women
Voters will use to determine who it will invite to participate in the California gubernatorial
debates this year.

Outside of some minimal requirements, such as having a campaign committee, headquarters, and
a calendar of appearances and, obviously, being on the ballot, you have a critical sentence
concerning criteria by which you will decide who will be invited to the debates. But this sentence
can have two totally different meanings. You state that a candidate must "demonstrate significant
voter interest and support". However, in the United States, there can be a remarkable gap
between whom the citizens want in the debates and who they may plan to vote for, because we
do not have runoffs.

Therefore, I respectfully request, in the interest of fairness, that the League conduct a poll asking
voters not who they may vote for in November, but who they want to see in the debates. I
believe you will find that there will be massive support for my candidacy.

In a "spoiler" system, with no runoffs, if a poll asks whom people might vote for you will get a
totally different result. It is, unfortunately, through this mechanism that many have used polls to
deny the voters their wishes and limit debates to the two well funded parties that have
consciously sought to prevent their being any alternative voices in American politics.

I understand and appreciate that the League attempts to be completely nonpartisan and to act as a
service to provide voters with information so that they are in a better position to make a decision
as to how to vote. The League has only recently begun to look at the peculiarity of the electoral
system in the United States, and how it denies voters the right to vote for whom they support.
Some of your chapters have urged you to take a stand for free elections in the United States,
where people are truly free to vote for who they support, as almost all other countries have done
by holding runoffs and providing proportional representation.

Some of your chapters have urged you to take a stand for free elections in the United States,
where people are truly free to vote for who they support, as almost all other countries have done
by holding runoffs and providing proportional representation.

In order to meet your honorable objectives of nonpartisanship and services for voters to help
them make the best possible electoral decisions, I urge you to consider the contradiction that our
electoral winner-take-all system has created, and ask that the League maintain that
nonpartisanship when it conducts any poll regarding the debates.

To do otherwise, I believe, the League would, although unintentionally, work against the voters'
desires and limit the voices heard against the desire of the electorate and its own stated goals. For
instance, what if more than 50 percent of the people said to you we want Mr. Camejo in the
debates? The League should, of course, allow me in the debates. In fact, as you know, a poll was
done by ABC television in 2002, and it wasn't just 50 percent, but more than two thirds of
Californians (69 percent), who wanted me in the debates.

Nevertheless, in 2002 I was excluded by the Los Angeles Times from that debate. The Governor
at the time, Gray Davis, went so far as to say that, if I was in the building even to listen to the
debate, he would leave, and there would be no debate. Then in violation of the law since I was a
formally invited guest, the Los Angeles Times blocked my entry into the building even to listen
to the debate.

However, in 2003, Stan Statham, the CEO of the California Broadcasters Association (CBA),
and Channel KXTV 2 in Oakland, included me in what turned out to be nationally televised
debates. The CBA event, with six candidates, received the largest audience of any televised
debate ever for a California gubernatorial race. People preferred to have more than two
candidates in the debates. A poll by the San Francisco Chronicle later showed that I was
considered the "winner" of the debates with 36 percent of the vote; Arnold Schwarzenegger was
in second place with 26 percent. Peter Schrag of the Sacramento Bee in his new book, California
America's High-Stake Experiment states, "As the two candidates with the most unequivocal
position on state issues, McClintock, the conservative Republican, and Camejo, the Green,
seemed to be viewers' personal favorites in the debates".

Sadly, using the criteria you're suggesting I would have been kept out of those debates, because
the public, when polled, gave a very different answer when asked about who they agreed with, or
who they wanted in the debates. Interestingly, during those debates in 2003, Senator Tom
McClintock pleaded with the voters to vote for who they supported. In any other country that
would be taken for granted that people vote for who they support. Only in our winner-take-all,
spoiler, undemocratic elections will voters massively vote against the person that they support.

Why is it that such a large number wanted me in the debates and said that I won the debates, but
a much smaller percentage actually voted for me or even in polls said they intend to vote for me?
This is the question that you really need to consider. But let me suggest that everyone knows the
answer to this question: WE DO NOT HAVE FREE AND OPEN ELECTIONS.

Our elections are designed so that people do not feel free to vote for whom they agree with. We
do this by not allowing runoff elections for our partisan state and federal races. The two parties
that control our political system have deliberately established a spoiler system that most often
forces voters to vote for the "lesser evil" and against what they would prefer. And we do not
allow proportional representation that would make all votes count and all voters receive
representation. In short, we have a system that effectively disenfranchises the majority of voters.
In large part because of the incumbents who write our electoral codes, the United States has a
voting system that is completely different from 99 percent of the rest of the world where free
elections are held. In almost all democracies of the world the US electoral system has been
correctly rejected as fundamentally anti-democratic. Not one country in Eastern Europe chose to
follow the US electoral system. Not one country in the Americas except Canada (which is
considering changing its laws) is similar to the United States.

In the United States if a party gets 20 percent of the vote those voters do not receive
20 percent of the representation. In fact, they may very well be denied any representation at all.
Further, many more than 20 percent of the people of California are not registered with either the
Democratic or Republican parties, and not one of those millions of citizens is in our state
legislature or senate. They are, for all intents and purposes, disenfranchised.

Our electoral system has led to people becoming so alienated that the majority do not vote,
which is unlike any country in Europe where free elections are the norm and every vote counts.
If we held a free election that includes a runoff for governor – thus eliminating the spoiler system
– and/or allowed some form of proportional representation, would the vote for my candidacy
have been much larger? We all know the answer is yes. At first the increase may be just two or
three times what I received (5.3 percent) in 2002. But, over time, if free and open elections were
held, the way in which people see elections would change, as would how they vote and respond
to polls. The number of voters would increase and their willingness to vote for new voices would
explode. That is precisely why free elections are not permitted.

We do have one extremely interesting and clear test of how Californians might vote if the spoiler
issue was removed, and that is the 2003 race that took place for mayor in San Francisco where a
runoff exists. A Democrat, Gavin Newsom, and a Green, Matt Gonzalez, made it to the runoff.
The Democrat, Gavin Newsom, was endorsed by the Republican Party, so we had a clear test of
what kind of support the Greens really have if no spoiler issue is involved. The
Democrat/Republican had ten times the funding the Green had. Newsom had President Clinton
and Vice President Gore come to campaign for him. Yet the Greens received not 3 percent or 5
percent, or even the 17 percent I received for Governor in San Francisco in 2002 (beating the
Republican candidate). The Green received 47 percent, and almost won against both the
combined forces of the Democrats and Republicans!

In the most recent June 6, 2006, Primary Election, we had another test of the interest voters have
in what the Green Party candidates stand for. In the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction,
there is a runoff because it is a nonpartisan race. Therefore, people feel free to vote for whom
they agree with. There was a candidate endorsed by the Democrats and one endorsed by the
Republicans. There was also a Green in the race, Sarah Knopp, who spent a total of $3,000 on
her campaign and was a complete unknown, 28-year-old high school teacher. All the voters had
to help them decide whom to vote for was their voter guide because there was little news
coverage and no televised debates. In this election, a race where people were free to vote for the
candidate that best expressed what they believed, Sarah Knopp received more than 678,000
votes, defeated the Republican Party endorsed candidate and came in second with 17.3 percent of
the vote. She almost forced the incumbent into a run off. He had a $1.1 million campaign war
chest.

The League of Women Voters, using the criteria outlined, would never have allowed Sarah
Knopp into a debate. She did not have money, she did not have an office or staff and she would
not have early on appeared on any poll as having support until the voter guide was available.
You would have excluded Sarah Knopp, a working teacher of modest means who wants to stand
up in defense of our education system and who comes in second as hundreds of thousands of
people vote for her to express their support. And, the League of Women Voters, if it had
structured a debate, would have excluded her and included the less popular Republican-endorsed
candidate.

Tom Paine once said when something is done wrong for a long time it appears to be right. I
implore the much-respected League of Women Voters to, in the future, take a strong stance for
Instant Run-off Voting, public financing of elections and the inclusion in debates of candidates
the public wish to hear, and to try to help put to an end the exclusionary anti-democratic policies
of the Democrats and Republicans.

In 2006 you can make this statement by insisting on my inclusion in the debates so that at least
one candidate that favors free and open elections in our nation can be heard. In California, on
one issue after another, whether it is the death penalty, the war in Iraq, our tax system, civil
liberties, funding for education, gay marriage, or the environment, a huge percentage, if not a
majority, agree with my proposals. For this election I have written a book, California under
Corporate Rule, outlining our views on many of the key issues. But we do not have millions of
dollars precisely because we support the poor, the immigrants, working people and not the major
corporations or the richest 1 percent who have more income than 60 percent of our people.

One of the most controversial issues in this election will be what should be done about
immigration and the large number of undocumented workers in California. America appears at
this moment to have three currents of opinion. One current favors criminalization, as expressed
by the majority in the Congress of the United States; another favors a guest worker apartheid
system as expressed by the compromise in the United States Senate; and the third is for
legalization and equality as expressed by the largest demonstrations in U.S. history these past
few months, where millions rallied in the streets.

I am the only candidate for Governor who has spoken at these demonstrations. I am the only
Spanish speaking Latino truly representative of the majority opinion on immigration in the
Latino community. To exclude my voice from the debates would be to exclude our community.
My presentation at the May 1st demonstration of 100,000 or more in San Francisco means that I
have spoken to more people directly than both the incumbent Republican and Democrat
combined, multiplied several times. And I was received with an ovation of support. Of course no
media covered my presentation and the San Francisco Chronicle the next day ran a front page
article stating that no candidates for Governor spoke at any of the May 1st rallies. (Actually two
gubernatorial candidates spoke – me and Barbara Becnel, a Democrat.)

The League of Women Voters should have but one criterion for who is included in the debates:
Who do the people want included in the debates. Period. Not who the people think will win the
election, or who they may vote for in the election after hearing the debates, or who has the
backing of the wealthy expressed in their funding.

I urge you to conduct that poll, and ask the question directly: "Who do you want in the debates?"
You will, no doubt, have a target level required for inclusion, maybe 5 percent, or 10 percent or
even higher. But please tell me how you can exclude a candidate the majority of the people are
asking you to include?

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Peter Miguel Camejo