Where are you, Cynthia McKinney?

A young man from the Democratic National Committee came to my door recently, requesting that I contribute $200 to Obama's campaign. Naturally, he prefaced this with a perfunctory, largely unintelligible spiel, and the distance in his gaze left me feeling justified in saying:

"Sorry." Defeat. "Oh...OK...well, are you with us on the campaign?" "Nope." "You're voting for McCain?" "I'm actually a McKinney supporter." "Who? McCain?"

Exactly. It is exchanges like these that make a Bay Area transplant feel nervous about her local community's engagement in serious national politics. It takes very little to debrief the DNC volunteers on who, precisely, is running for President of the United States—but judging from the U.S. media's embarrassingly biased and incomplete analyses of Obama and McCain, it's no shock that former U.S. Representative and current Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney isn't generating much debate. To be fair, neither are the nominees of other third parties-unless they are being evoked as part of water-cooler mythology: they are election "spoilers." This term negates Diebold debacles and thousands of "disappeared" votes—if the election process itself is a sham, then why marginalize a woman like McKinney with bunk logic?

She is calling for a re-investigation of the events of September 11. She advocates for Hurricane Katrina victims. She supported legislation that would end the transfer of weapons to governments that oppose democracy or human rights. She introduced articles of impeachment against President Bush in 2006. She never supported the war in Iraq, and heavily criticizes the Democrats and Republicans who did.

Nevertheless, I'm told to vote for the "viable candidate"—this usually coming from those who are, like me, are desperate to see McCain lose. But I refuse to cast a faithless, yet utilitarian, vote for Obama. By actively participating in the closed system of federal elections, I would be perpetuating this miserable forced binary that parades as democracy.

Eighty percent of NBC is owned by GM, a company that directly profits from war. This might partially explain why they will not give adequate airtime to a person like McKinney. TV news corporations don't even adequately investigate the policies and controversies of the Democrat/Republican race. We could all use more intelligent criticisms from "the mainstream," ones that invoke more than Obama's middle name or McCain's Italian shoes.

The United States' failure to truly embody democratic ideals lies in the media's muting of rational debates, and full inclusion of all the presidential candidates. The individual's failure to independently investigate the choices-relying instead on that incompetent media's assessments—and presuming that the vote is already decided in his or her state, engenders this pale and broken political institution. True "change" and "hope" isn't going to bought for 200 bucks a pop.