In a year when many voters have complained they're not happy with the Democratic and Republican candidates -- at least in the presidential race -- candidates from other political parties are getting some attention. Maybe not a lot and that's one of their complaints.

As WITF continues Election 2016 coverage before next month's election, Smart Talk is featuring conversations with many of the national and state candidates.

Appearing on Tuesday's program is 16th Congressional District candidate Shawn Patrick House, who is representing the Libertarian Party.

The 16th District is made up of parts of Lancaster, Berks and Chester Counties.

Also, Saturday Night Live has long poked fun at and used politicians as the butt of their jokes. The Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump match-up this year has provided lots of material for the show and apparently last Saturday's sketch infuriated Trump.

After the show aired, Trump tweeted "Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me. Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election."

Political satire has been around since before there was a United States. For hundreds of years it was in the form of political cartoons.

To discuss that history is Dr. Amelia Rauser, Professor of Art History, Chair of the Art and Art History at Franklin and Marshall College, Author of the 2008 book Caricature Unmasked and Dr. Alison Dagnes, a Professor of Political Science at Shippensburg University, author of the book, A Conservative Walks Into a Bar...

The narrative of the Presidential race has taken an ugly turn as the focus has shifted from policies and platforms to the history of sexual assault by one candidate and questions regarding the spouse of the other. A video was recently released showing Republican candidate Donald Trump bragging about committing sexual assault. His response was to attack Bill Clinton's history, which has forced Americans to examine the proliferation of sexual abuse and the attitudes regarding gender relations.

What is being discounted as "locker room talk" elicits very real and harrowing memories for survivors of rape and sexual assault. The silver lining of that unpleasant rhetoric may be that Americans are becoming more aware of just how many girls and women are forced to endure and hide this abuse. The narrative has been pushed to the front, and there is no ignoring it.

Kristen Houser of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center and Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape will join us on Smart Talk Monday to discuss the dramatic increase in reports of sexual assault since the release of the Trump video, and the messages that each campaign is imparting to women of all ages.

We will speak with Republican Congressman Charlie Dent from Pennsylvania's 15th Congressional District. Dent, who is fighting to retain his seat in a three-way race with Democratic challenger Rick Daugherty and Libertarian candidate Paul Rizzo, represents Pennsylvanians from Lebanon, Dauphin. Berks, Lehigh and Northampton Counties.

When speaking to supporters at rallies across the country, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has often warned voters that next month's election could be rigged so that Democrat Hillary Clinton would win. Trump has been very vocal about the potential for a corrupt election in Pennsylvania -- especially in the city of Philadelphia.

As a result, Trump and Republicans are calling for more poll-watchers in the state and there is a little known law in Pennsylvania that allows a poll-watcher to challenge the identity of a voter and where that voter lives.

That raises the possibility of voter intimidation.

Dave Davies of WHYY Newsworks in Philadelphia recently reported on election security and joins us on Friday's Smart Talk to describe what he found.

WITF's Smart Talk is speaking with state and national candidates for office until November's election.

On Friday's program, Mike Molesevich, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 10th Congressional District appears on the program. Molesevich is running against Republican incument Congressman Tom Marino.

The 10th District includes Juniata, Mifflin, Snyder, and Union Counties and parts of Perry and Northumberland Counties. It also runs to the New York border and into northeastern Pennsylvania.

The presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have garned so much attention during this election year that many of the candidates for other important offices have been drowned out.

And that shouldn't be the case, especially when it comes to the Pennsylvania's Attorney General race.

The office has been embroiled in controversy for the past two-and-a-half years under former Attorney General Kathleen Kane. Kane was convicted this summer of leaking secret grand jury information and lying about it under oath. She resigned but not before the office of Attorney General went through numerous personnel changes and reportedly law morale.

So it would seem that job one for the candidates running would be to clean up the office and establish policies to ensure it operates ethically and efficiently.

Both Republican John Rafferty and Democrat Josh Shapiro have promised to do just that.

Both candidates have also zeroed in on aggressively prosecuting the suppliers of opioids and heroin that have reached crisis stage in Pennsylvania.

Both Shapiro and Rafferty appear on Thursday's Smart Talk in separate conversations.

According to the Centers for Disease Control the majority of Americans say it's extremely important to them that their families are not burdened by tough decisions at the end of life. But about the same number have not communicated their end-of-life wishes.

Wednesday's Smart Talk focuses on an issue that affects us all, but doesn't get the kind of attention it deserves.

As part of WITF's ongoing Transforming Health series, Finding Peace is a multimedia project that explores the different questions and options Pennsylvanians have regarding end-of-life decisions for themselves and their loved ones. WITF-TV will present HealthSmart: Finding Peace on Thursday, October 13th at 8 pm.

Appearing on the program are Dr. Jim Hoefler, a professor at Dickinson College, who has written extensively about end-of-life issues, Dr. Vipul Bhatia, Medical Director of Post-Acute Services, Wellspan Health, Keira McGuire, the producer of WITF's Health Smart and Ben Allen, WITF's Transforming Health reporter. We will also speak with a family who have faced these difficult decisions.

The 71st Pennsylvania National Horse Show kicks off on Thursday with the ten day event beginning with a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex. The event will include various equestrian competitions, training and dressage contests as well as an exhibition of industry vendors.

The National Horse Show celebrates the relationship between man and equine and benefits children in the region via the Harrisburg Kiwanis Youth Foundation. Susie Webb, Executive Director of the PA National Horse Show will join us to discuss the week's events and talk about the role the event plays in the community.

WITF's Smart Talk program will be featuring conversations before the November 8 election with many of the candidates running for national and state offices.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Katie McGinty appears on Tuesday's show to discuss the issues and her campaign.

McGinty is running against incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. It's a campaign that has become increasingly negative based on the TV commercials voters see.

McGinty, who is the former Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Chief of Staff to Gov. Tom Wolf, has been hitting Toomey hard on the senator not disavowing Donald Trump's presidency. Toomey, on the other hand has hit back at McGinty for enriching herself by accepting jobs that had ties to her government positions.

We'll discuss those issues and others on the program.

Also, October is LGBT History Month. One of the focuses of this month's events in Central Pennsylvania is related to aging.

Joining us on Tuesday's program are Ted Martin, Executive Director of Equality PA, Louie Marvin, Executive Director of the LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania and Terri Clark, a certified trainer with the National Resource Center on LGBT Aging.

Last night's debate between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton was probably different than any other in American presidential campaign history. Candidates have had testy exchanges in debates but perhaps none ever got as personal as the second debate in this campaign.

Coming two days after the release of a 2005 tape that recorded Trump talking about how celebrities aggressively pursue women in a sexual manner and with Republicans pulling their support across the country, Trump went on the offensive calling Clinton a liar and "the devil," saying if elected he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether she broke laws and countered that Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton actually sexually assaulted women.

Clinton for her part also called Trump a liar, repeated that he is unfit to be president and said the tape showed exactly who Trump is.

On today's Smart Talk, Franklin and Marshall College political analyst and pollster Dr. G. Terry Madonna joins us to make sense of it all and how the debate will impact voters.

Madonna also talks about several recent polls that show much different results in Pennsylvania's U.S. Senate race between Democrat Katie McGinty and Republican incumbent Senator Pat Toomey.

Ireland's Ambassador to the United Nations David Donoghue appears on Friday's Smart Talk. Donaghue has served in diplomatic postings that have allowed him to participate in some of the most pivotal events in modern history. Donoghue served a diplomatic posting to the Holy See during the short reign of Pope John XXIII and the election of John Paul II. He was instrumental in brokering the peace agreements ending hostilities between Northern Ireland and Great Britain and represented Ireland to the Russian Federation during Vladimir Putin's rise to power.

In 2013, Donoghue was made the Permanent Representative of Ireland to the United Nations and has since been appointed to the UN Summit on Global Migration and Refugee Issues to address the growing problem of human displacement on a global scale.

Ambassador Donoghue will speak about the role of the United Nations in a time of a worldwide human rights crisis. The lecture will take place at Elizabethtown College on Monday, October 17th in Gibble Auditorium, Esbenshade Hall.

As the world's population continues to increase, so do trends in global warming and increased land development which means agricultural production places increasing strain on communities. The demand for higher food production has led to deforestation, costly irrigation in arid regions, toxic accumulations of fertilizer and pesticide runoff and an increased attention to industrial scale farming and crop modification.

The sprawl of urban development has provided an opportunity for progressive farming concepts to take root. In Lancaster, the Urban Farming Initiative seeks to use existing infrastructure as platforms for growing crops in the city. Rooftops, abandoned properties and unused structures can be used to create locally produced organic produce as well as provide jobs.

The newest initiative from the UFI involves building a vertical greenhouse adjacent to the Prince Street Garage at West Orange Street. Vegetables would be grown hydroponically, using no soil and a tenth of the water used in traditional methods. Corey Fogarty, president of the Lancaster Urban Farming Initiative joins us to discuss this project and the implications vertical farming could have on future urban planning. We're joined by Nona Yehia, CEO and Co-Founder, Vertical Harvest, Jackson Hole, Wyoming where the first vertical greenhouse is located.

The act of being grateful -- showing appreciation or thankfulness -- is more than being polite. As children we all were taught that saying "thank you" after someone had given us something was polite and the right thing to do. But gratitude can be more than that according to our guest on Thursday's Smart Talk.

Janice Kaplan is the author of the 2015 book The Gratitude Diaries -- How a Year Looking on the Bright Side Can Transform Your Life. Kaplan used gratitude to do just that.

Kaplan vowed on New Year's Eve to spend the next year being grateful for what she had in her life and not the material things that many people think of immediately when ask what they're thankful for. She kept a daily diary -- listing what she was grateful for every day. Instead of complaining to her husband about his mistakes or what bothered her, she looked for what her husband did and meant to her that she was grateful for.

Then Kaplan focused in on other areas of her life and what she appreciated when it came to her finances, career and health. Along the way, she was leading a happier and more satisfying life.

Janice Kaplan is a best-selling author, former editor of Parade Magazine and TV producer.

The Gratitude Diaries is WITF's Summer Read for 2016 -- a collaborative reading initiative of libraries in Adams, Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Lancaster, Lebanon, Perry and York Counties and community partners.

Urban theorist Richard Florida thinks that successful economic development and growth is cultivated by what he terms the "creative class," a STEM educated workforce influenced by culture and geography. He points to specific regions throughout the country and the characteristics that make them attractive to specific industries and their relationship to the global economy.

Florida taught public policy at George Mason University and spent 18 years at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz College in Pittsburgh. He is a Senior Editor at The Atlantic and currently the dean of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

Richard Florida will be speaking at Penn State, Harrisburg Campus on October 12th as part of the PNC Thought Leaders Lecture Series and he appear on Smart Talk Wednesday to discuss responsible and sustainable economic growth in the region.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the American Cancer Society is partnering with Harrisburg community leaders to raise awareness of a disease that afflicts more than 38,000 Pennsylvania women annually. Real Men Wear Pink has collected more than $20,000 for breast cancer research, and they are sponsoring the October 15th "Making Strides Against Breast Cancer" walk to raise funds for research, screening and treatment.

We'll learn more about this disease that touches one in eight women and how to get involved with Brent Woodward and Joe Henriques of Real Men Wear Pink of Harrisburg.

There was a question during the program about 3-D mmaograms. The Pennsylvania Insurance Commission provided information. You can see it here.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are confirming Pennsylvania's status as a key swing state with their frequent visits and appeals to supporters. On Saturday evening, the Republican candidate stopped in Manheim to continue a campaign largely focused on discrediting his opponent, who, according to a Franklin and Marshall poll released on Tuesday, surged to a nine point lead in Pennsylvania.

Hillary Clinton held an event in Harrisburg Tuesday where she urged Pennsylvanians to register and rallied supporters to encourage voters to the polls. WITF's Katie Meyer covered both events and she joins Smart Talk to compare and contrast the candidates and their supporters as they work their ground game for what is a key prize in the race for electoral votes.