Return Home
Anyone who seeks elective office and who meets the basic qualifications should have a chance to convince voters he or she has skills and goals that will serve them well. This is especially true at the beginning of a campaign, when the field is still forming.
Yet repeatedly in the race now under way to succeed the late Joe Moakley in Congress, two candidates have not only been ignored generally but actually excluded from most of the public debates and forums.
Neither Williams Sinnott, of Hyde Park, nor John Taylor, of West Roxbury, is an elected official, but each brings credentials to the race.
...
Since 1964, when the racist poll tax was abolished by the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, every eligible American has had the same opportunity to vote. Persons who put themselves forward as candidates for elective office should not face barriers that are equally invidious.