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When I registered to vote at the age of eighteen, I registered as a Republican. My parents were Republicans, and just as I followed their…
“In the US, there is basically one party – the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but…
“In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to these policies. As is most of the population.” ― Noam Chomsky
It would be no shocking revelation to any citizen of the United States to hear that our political system is dysfunctional. Year after year, we participate in the spectator sport of politics, hoping beyond hope that our elected officials will manage to implement the solutions we need to maintain the quality of life that America has come to embody, only to see them continually stymied by gridlock, bureaucracy, and partisan stubbornness.
As Katherine Gehl and Michael E. Porter explain in The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy, “What should be a problem-solving, outcomes-driven cycle of elections and legislative leadership is instead an industrial-strength perversion that fosters unhealthy competition and blocks the innovation and progress for which American democracy is known. Politics has become the preeminent barrier to addressing the very problem it exists to solve.”
Many of us have come to accept it as normal. Even though it may not be perfect, even though it might even be downright corrupt and not working in our best interests nor those of future generations, we are pacified by the belief that America is still the best country in the world, and we continue to merely put up with the stark ineffectiveness of our government. We shrug our shoulders, accept that changing it is impossible, and get back to chasing the elusive American Dream.
We may get angry about it, but we feel helpless about what we can actually do about it. Since they’ve been in power for the entirety of our lifetimes, we begrudgingly accept the Democratic and Republican Parties as eternal entities that will always be in power. And we submerge ourselves in pessimism over whether it will ever change.
“All of us have a vested interest in pessimism,” writes Gar Alperovitz in What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About The Next American Revolution. “We don't have to do anything if nothing can be done!”
But what if something can be done? What if it can change? After all, change is the only constant in life.
It’s important to realize that there was a time when the Democratic and Republican Parties did not exist, and there was even a time when the United States of America didn’t exist. And it is not outside the spectrum of possibilities that there could come a time when those entities cease to exist again. The question will be whether this generation has the same fortitude that the founders did and the same willingness to embrace changing their reality to take a step toward a greater sense of democracy.
What the founders gave us may not have been perfect, initially allowing only 6% of the population to vote, but it was a step in becoming more perfect. In this generation, we are being called upon to take that next step toward a more perfect union, one not mired down by the juvenile habit of constant conflict, but one empowering a healthier sense of competition that allows for innovative collaboration.
Of course, the founders had the luxury of not already being so divided. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America, “The settlers of New England were at the same time ardent sectarians and daring innovators. Narrow as the limits of some of their religious opinions were, they were free from all political prejudices.”
Unfortunately, since the duopoly originated and evolved, our political landscape has been littered with manufactured prejudices. The two party electoral system of the United States has been spectacularly manipulated to create an array of divisive measures whereby the American populace has found itself in a constant state of outrage and derision toward our compatriots.
As Noam Chomsky pointed out in How the World Works, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
It’s time to change the debate and release ourselves from the antiquated notion that our government must be comprised of two oppositional parties. At a time when many Americans are finding themselves at odds with the limitation of binary gender, many others are realizing that we needn’t have a binary government either. Just as many are deciding they don’t want to be either male or female, many others are realizing they don’t want to be Democrats or Republicans either.
However, many remain steadfast in their supposed normalcy and maintain their allegiance to the two parties in power. As Christopher H. Achen writes in Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce, “Americans are much more resolute in their identification with party than they are in their identification with ideology.”
Because we force our elected representatives to engage in the “us versus them” mentality required by the duopoly, we follow our leaders down the same path of ignorance, scorn, and spite that our electoral system perpetuates. However, even in the midst of this turmoil, many Americans are finding ways to find compromise and using the innovation this country has come to be known for to develop new ways and means that may give us the strength to overcome this limitation and allow our democracy to evolve rather than whither.
Already the states of Alaska and Maine have approved measures to incorporate Ranked Choice Voting in their electoral systems, as have 52 other American municipalities. This allows voters to rank the nominees and vote for more than just politicians devoted to the Democratic and Republican parties. According to FairVote, 43 jurisdictions used Ranked Choice Voting in the last election.
Although the governor of Florida recently abolished that freedom for its citizens by banning Ranked Choice Voting in the state, other states are looking into adopting the practice. For those states that have citizens with the courage to experiment with this new form of democratic activity, the methodologies will vary as each jurisdiction invests in the activity of creating a more perfect union. It will not be an overnight transformation, but it does have the power to help us transform our government into something more functional than blind and dumb adherence to the ineffectiveness of the two party system.
For more information on what is currently being done to change our electoral system to more greatly represent the will of the people, visit FairVote, Rank The Vote, Unite America, Business for America, SAM, Common Cause, RepresentUS, Campaign Legal, US Vote Foundation, or Democracy Found. As you can see, the movement is underway, and change is happening. Please be a part of it.
Remember that Massachusetts legalized same sex marriage in 2003, followed by California and Connecticut five years later in 2008. Six other states then legalized it, and in 2015, the federal government deemed it legal throughout the United States. If 9 states embrace Ranked Choice Voting to determine the outcomes of their elections, how long will it take for it to become the new law of the land?
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