The Maine Sunday Telegram’s July 26 editorial about the U.S. Senate race concludes with the claim that this newspaper represents independent journalism we should trust. This is a tough claim to believe if you support independent U.S. Senate candidate Lisa Savage. You didn’t even mention her.

At least two times the people of Maine organized ballot initiatives and won the privilege of ranked-choice voting in order to expand options beyond the two-party system, to expand the public policy debate, and to allow for more positive, issue-based campaigns.

Your readers would have been better served if they understood that Lisa Savage’s U.S. Senate campaign will not participate in the corporate-funded, unfiltered mud-slinging “air war” your editorial describes. Lisa Savage’s campaign refuses to take corporate money. This independence allows her to focus on creative thinking about real solutions, not the death march of the status quo.

Every opinion, every article, every discussion that ignores Lisa Savage or diminishes her U.S. Senate campaign demonstrates journalism’s complicity with the two-party system and belies its claim of independence. Until the newspapers begin to seriously cover the Lisa Savage U.S. Senate campaign, their readers are denied access to the benefits of an independent perspective, and the robust debate ranked-choice voting was initiated to create.