Independent Voters and Trickle Up Politics

It’s 2016, and our two major parties are on their way to bringing us a general election showdown so representative of modern American politics, it’s a little too on-the-nose. A millionaire reality TV star will be running against one of the nation’s millionaire “royal families.” This is America, folks!

Not surprisingly, things have gotten this way due to decades of decreasing voter turnout and increasing voter disenfranchisement. With low turnout, the parties can basically do what they want. They won’t say it (at least not on purpose), but they prefer the low turnouts. Which gives them every reason they need to freely disenfranchise voters. But there’s one unintended consequence: politically unaffiliated voters have now become the largest voting bloc in the country.

It doesn’t mean that the 40% of us have all come together in agreement on much. The only thing all 40% have in common is a desire not be counted with either party establishment. And being unaffiliated means we have also opted out of being Green or Libertarian. So, a no-party platform is a difficult one to run a campaign on, that’s for sure. Bernie Sanders has even forgone his previous “Independent” status to capture enough Democratic votes nationally to be a contender. He claims to be fighting the widespread dissatisfaction from inside the party, the plausibility of which can be debated.

You cannot have a revolution inside of a counter-revolutionary party
 — Dr. Jill Stein, candidate for Green Party nominee

Young voters emboldened by the Sanders and Trump campaigns cry afoul at their respective parties’ stonewalling efforts. More desensitized voters point out that the parties make their own rules, fair or not.

“It’s the way things are.” It’s sounds cynical, but it is true.

One thing is clear: serious contenders for the presidency must play by the rules of the major parties. Even if the goal is to ultimately transcend party politics. The system — with its delegates, superdelegates, and the Electoral College — is designed to prevent party transcendence. Party leaders even say so. And ever since the relative successes of candidates like George McGovern and Howard Dean, those preventative measures have only been strengthened.

Unpledged [super]delegates exist, really, to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists.

— Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Democratic National Committee Chair

So, the question is begged: what can the largest voting bloc in the nation do to make a change, if the candidate selection process is designed to ignore them? And what change should it be? “Independents” can’t form one party; we’ve got the numbers, we just don’t have the common ground. Because of this, Independents’ shining national moment may never come. We don’t have the unity. We don’t have the team pride and fierce tribal loyalty of the Rs and the Ds.

The good news? The fight isn’t about team pride or tribal loyalty. We don’t want to just introduce another “team” to compete in the mix. The Independent voter’s fight should be about creating a more democratic electoral environment. We want better people leading us, who perhaps care more about their own communities and the individuals living and working there. And it’s a movement that any “tribe” should get behind — giving people (and their tribes) a more direct voice in the process, be it a conservative or progressive voice. And yes, unaffiliated voters usually do care whether the country is more conservative or more progressive. Independent does not mean “politically centrist”. But there is the spreading recognition on both sides that the major party represents less and less what they wish it did.

With more and more states being added to the list, my home state of Arizona has more political Independents than either major party. Independents may not ever be able to band together to elect a president, but we can vote locally to send better, truer representatives of our communities into Congress. We can vote locally to oust corrupt Elections Committee members and local leaders. We can vote locally to elect Corporation Commission regulators that aren’t funded by dark money from the companies they’re regulating. We can vote locally to prevent elected leaders from having to spend 30 hours a week fundraising to keep their jobs. It might not look as overwhelming and passionate and romantic as the Bernie Sanders campaign — birds might not land on each candidate’s podiums — but the Sanders anti-establishment message has reverberated with many Independents, helping him to victory in open-primary states like Michigan and Rhode Island. If people running in local and state elections could garner that kind of passion, much more would probably be done to fix our system than if Sanders were president.

We need to reset a lot of the vitriolic rhetoric you hear today, and elect people who understand they’re elected to hold the public trust.
 — Rep. David Jolly (R-Florida)

If we just show up. Our votes will eventually trickle up.

I know that’s a huge caveat. But if our common interest is simply having a more representative and less corrupt democracy, whether more conservative or progressive, we should be able to show up and say so. Especially in Arizona — there is a permanent early voting list you can get yourself on and never have to leave your home to make your vote count. Look into your state’s election policies. There may be options that don’t require you to brave crowded polling places and skip out on work hours just to exercise the right to vote in the alleged greatest democratic country in the world.