07/24/14: Don’t let the election come quietly

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

THIS SATURDAY, two of Virginia’s U.S. Senate candidates will face off in the first debate of the election season, one that few will attend and even fewer will hear about. That’s a shame.

There’s an unwritten rule in politics about debates: Incumbents shun them; challengers desire them.

Incumbents, unless the contest is close, don’t want to give challengers an opportunity to be heard. Challengers need them not only to be heard, but to be taken seriously, particularly when polling shows them trailing badly.

As a result , there are often very few opportunities for voters to compare candidates. Instead of debates — or, more often, forums in which the candidates appear together but are not allowed to address each other — voters’ exposure comes in the form of positive messages from the candidate or negative ones from his opponent.

Third-party candidates are typically just ignored. The third candidate in the Senate race, Robert Sarvis, will appear on the ballot but was not invited to Saturday’s event.

This does a disservice to the voters. We deserve to have as much information as possible and should not have to rely just on the exchange of talking points, which campaigns have devolved into.

The Senate contest will be at the top of November’s ballot. Also on the ballot will be congressional races; as previously reported, all but one of Virginia’s 11 congressional races will be contested. In Virginia Beach, Portsmouth and Suffolk, voters will choose City Council and School Board members.

With so many contests, our nights this fall should be full of opportunities to hear candidates try to persuade us to vote for them. But it won’t happen unless we demand it.

Although the first debate is Saturday, the rest of the debate calendar for the Senate race — and all other contests on the November ballot — is still in formation. If recent history is a guide, there will be no Senate debate in Hampton Roads. If recent history is a guide, voters in the 2nd and 4th Congressional districts — the 3rd is unopposed — will have maybe one or two opportunities to see the candidates side by side.

Fortunately, the local contests will offer more opportunities — not as many as there should be but more than those further up the ballot.

I am convinced that voters’ lack of exposure to candidates — outside of their biased, self-serving statements — is a leading cause of low turnout.

Two nominating contests — one here in Hampton Roads and another in Northern Virginia — provide some evidence.

The members of the House of Delegates representing the 48th and 90th districts resigned the same day. With the elections set for Aug. 19, the speaker of the House of Delegates gave the parties just seven days — including the July Fourth holiday — to nominate candidates. Both districts are heavily Democratic.

In the Northern Virginia 48th District, organizers quickly put together a debate for the seven candidates, held the day before the vote. Here in the 90th, the three candidates never appeared together.

Turnout for the 90th was a whopping 452 voters, about 1 percent of the total registered in the district. By comparison, the 2,126 votes cast in the 48th District represented about 3.5 percent of the voters there .

It is often said that democracy is not a spectator sport. In the lazy days of summer, it may appear that little is going on. But decisions are being made that will affect us in the fall and beyond. We have to do our part — and not just on Election Day.

Contact the candidates. Ask them to participate in debates.

Democracy depends on it.