As with past election cycles, third party and independent candidates – as well as initiatives aimed at reducing the power of the two major parties – are struggling to achieve access to general election ballots. In some cases, this is the result of general apathy toward specific parties, candidates, or reforms.

On Wednesday night, Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and her running-mate, Ajamu Baraka, made their first co-appearance before a national audience during a town hall event hosted by CNN's Chris Cuomo.

Among many good-government types, there’s a reliable refrain: We need more moderates in Washington!

Such sentiments are no doubt well intended. It’s easy to see where they come from. The division and contentiousness in Washington is dysfunctional by any standard.

Nonetheless, the yearning for more moderates is misplaced.

Vote your conscience. Like many, I have struggled with the choices we face in the coming presidential election and the tone of the campaigns. I am increasingly disturbed and distressed by the political environment – in some ways similar to what we experience every four years, but amplified to an unprecedented degree. The Trump campaign, in particular, has gone beyond the bounds of what is normally deemed acceptable. Even in politics.

Evan McMullin’s first full week as a candidate for president has been both surprising and, for some of us, predictable. McMullin talks and acts like a seasoned candidate, and not like a novice traversing his first national campaign. Predictable are the dismissive tones from a political class heart hardened to newcomers.

With a number of severe terrorist attacks having occurred in the United States, Europe, and around the world in recent years, many Americans are concerned about how to prevent such attacks in the future. Given that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL) has carried out, inspired, and claimed responsibility for many of these attacks, the presidential candidates have had to weigh in on what they would do to stop terrorism and defeat ISIS.

I’ve been working on homeless issues for more than 30 years in San Diego and I can honestly say I’ve never seen the problem as bad as it is right now.

Depending on the study, San Diego has either the 3rd or 4th highest homeless population in the country and yet, with a viable solution at our fingertips, we continue to stub our toe on the way to solve this issue.

The political leadership in America’s Finest City needs to understand how close the solution is, and act accordingly.

The 2016 election has quickly turned into more than a two-person race as a growing segment of the electorate is looking outside the major parties to viable alternative options.

Concerns of the heart. Our country is divided. It's been divided before but this time, it's scary.

I was 8 years old the first time I asked my dad the difference between a Republican and a Democrat. His answer was something like, "Democrats are idiots and Republicans are real leaders." I was so confused by the whole political thing. To this day, it baffles me how people can stand on one side of the fence, behind a party accusing the other party of the same things they are guilty of doing. It's the ultimate game of point the finger.

In a journal article published this summer, Dr. Deborah B. Gardner wrote of four myths that American voters are obsessed with, and are desperately clinging to at all costs.

Academics love to do postmortem studies on elections, using facts, figures, trends, and statistics to demonstrate any number of ideas or theories. More rarely, like this article, academics occasionally jump into the middle of a race with ideas and analysis.