MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th November, 2020) The media coverage of the Senate election in New Jersey was "terribly unfair," Madelyn Hoffman, a longtime environmental and social justice activist, who was the Green Party candidate for the US Senate, told Sputnik.
A number of states held Senate elections on Tuesday alongside this year's presidential election. In New Jersey , where Madelyn Hoffman stood and got under 1 percent, Incumbent Democratic Senator Cory Booker managed to decisively defeat Republican Rik Mehta with over 60 percent against 37.9.
"The media coverage of the US Senate race was terribly unfair," Hofman said.
For example, the three independent candidates were excluded from any election debates that were held in New Jersey, she said.
"Almost all campaigning was done virtually which means the events were only visible to those who participated and then those who were reached through social media. Our campaign reached thousands on many an occasion, but without the traditional print media or interviews on public affairs programs, we were at a disadvantage," she explained.
Hoffman added that the media were not fair to Mehta either.
"We knew well in advance that most New Jersey residents would be voting by mail and that, as such, most of the voting would be completed before Election Day on November 3rd. To the best of my knowledge, there were only two debates held between Mehta and Booker and they were both held within a week of Election Day well after millions of votes had already been cast," she said.
US LACKS SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
According to Hoffman, in the US it is nearly impossible for an independent party to break through even at a local level, let alone the presidential.
"When Abraham Lincoln was elected as a Republican, he was elected as a representative of a 3rd party. But since then, while there are many political parties other than the Democrats and the Republicans, the system is set up to exclude these political parties and to make it extremely difficult for them to gain traction," she said.
Now the US "lacks a system of proportional representation" like the one that exists in many other nations, she said.
"Proportional representation forces parties to work together -- and allows smaller parties the ability to gain some seats in the legislative bodies once they achieve a certain threshold percentage of the vote. No such option exists in the US," Hoffman concluded.
