CIVIC INNOVATION
A Pledge to Bridge America’s Divide
“Bridge Pledge” — a magic escape from toxic political polarization?
America’s toxic red versus blue tug-of-war is out of control. Everyone I talk to feels trapped with no way out.
But what if there is a way out?
In January, my family and I returned to the (United) States after many years overseas. Sure, we’d read all about the incessant political polarization that has engulfed our country. But when we set foot on shore the stark divide just hit different.
Man, I missed Americans. The friendly banter. Genuinely kind strangers. Helpful people. Easy rapport. Even the people renewing my driver’s license at the notorious Department of Motor Vehicles were kind.
For sure, be friendly. But also be damned careful not to scratch too deep, lest politics rear its ugly head: goodwill and rapport instantly destroyed.
Toxic political polarization is killing us.
The relentless red vs. blue thing is the worst. Like a toy finger trap, the harder we fight to get out, the more stuck we remain.
What if we’re thinking about it totally wrong?!
A fresh way of thinking begins with two common understandings.
First, neither party has a monopoly on crazy. There are, in fact, reasonable, thoughtful, and collaborative candidates hiding in plain sight within both parties. Leaders who can connect with others, build coalitions, and use reason to find win-win solutions to benefit multiple sides.
Second, trying to convince the other side they are wrong is getting us nowhere. We shouldn’t all have the same beliefs anyway. On the contrary, the freewheeling and wide range of ideas across our full population is arguably our country’s superpower in the first place. But only to the extent our political leaders can sit with, listen to, and collaborate with those with different views.
It seems to me the mistake we make as citizens is electing politicians based on which team they play for, rather than their actual ability to govern our deliciously bonkers American populace. Like zealous sports fans, we elect our politicians to beat the other side. It’s zero-sum warfare: “I win, you lose. You win, I lose.”
Imagine if we could identify and elect leaders, regardless of party, who seek consensus solutions in the common interest of a wider coalition. Pragmatic versus dogmatic. Win-win versus zero-sum game. Growth mindset versus fixed mindset. Bridgers versus dividers.
Dividers put party and ideology above common interests.
Bridgers put common interests ahead of party or ideology.
Can we objectively identify “bridgers” though?
Late last year, I got to wondering whether this was possible. I’m now convinced it is.
With thanks to public data from non-partisan sources like the Common Ground Scorecard, I developed a pilot version of Bridge Grade — a new and objective method to reliably sort bridgers from dividers.
Think of it like Rotten Tomatoes for politicians.
Bridge Grade uses a combination of public data and an open source and transparent assessment process to score and grade politicians on their abilities to bridge our divide. Bridge Grade gathers data from voting records, public statements, bill authoring, and gathers other markers to draw signal from the noise. Aggregated data from many public sources objectively sorts the pragmatic from the dogmatic.
Bridge Grade assigns politicians “sanitation grades” like restaurants get from the health department to warn us of potential indigestion or worse.
In politics, As and Bs are bridgers. Cs and Fs are dividers.
If you eat at a restaurant with a C sanitation grade and get sick, well that’s on you. Same same. When we vote in dividers and then they jam things up, well that’s on us.
Bridge Pledge: A voting alliance
It’s up to us to vote in the bridgers and vote out the dividers. Bridge Pledge is an alliance of Independent, Republican, and Democrat voters, who, as a voting bloc, agree to always vote for bridgers — even when the candidate’s party affiliation or ideology does not match ours. Especially then.
We flip politics totally sideways. Instead of red versus blue, we choose purple (bridgers) over gray (dividers).
Despite being committed to voting for bridgers, as individuals, we maintain our own party affiliations and personal beliefs. What unites us is not common ideology, but rather our aligned interest in voting for the adults in the room.
This simple change in orientation is our magic escape from the finger trap.
Note: It’s Not For Everyone
“I can’t vote for her. She might raise my taxes.” “I can’t vote for him. He will restrict my choice.”
Voting for bridgers over party is not for everyone. It doesn’t have to be.
A committed swing bloc of 3–5% of voters will be enough to tip the balance and change the game. We’ll change the culture of politics by giving leaders the incentive to collaborate and find consensus solutions oriented toward common interests.
We don’t have to change the minds of partisan voters who are already firm in their voting views. Instead, Bridge Pledge aims to grow by paving a path back for voters who have been sitting on the sidelines.
Consider that in 2016, Trump won the election with 62,984,828 votes. Clinton lost with just 65,853,514 votes. Never mind. The real headline is that approximately 100,000,000 eligible voters didn’t even bother to vote.
How could 100,000,000 Americans not bother to vote in the epic Trump vs Hilary election?
According to the study “One of the clearest findings of the study is that non-voters feel — and are — under informed on political issues.”
So, let’s inform them then.
With a new paradigm and a color-coded “cheat sheet”, we’ll offer non-voters an easy onramp back to voting for millions who otherwise will not bother. Together, this group is poised to regain control.
Sorting bridgers from dividers sounds simple. What’s the catch?
If this solution is so great, why hasn’t it already happened? Data, technology, and yes, artificial intelligence.
Until recently it was not realistic to hoover up and make sense of enough objective data to produce a reliable method to grade politicians as bridgers. And the volume of data now being captured on politicians is exploding. We’ll embrace AI (with checks and balances) for good. As more data flows, and as the processing improves, the grading process only gets better from here.
The payoff potential is huge.
As pledgers who join Bridge Pledge, we put aside personal ideology because we’d rather have adults in the room to find common sense solutions that are win-wins for all of us. It will be worth it. We can change the incentive systems for our representatives away from today’s zero-sum game to one of win-win compromises with solutions that people want, while allowing for trade-offs that are based on common interests.
The best part is that as everyday citizens we can now reclaim some lost control. As we vote in incrementally more bridgers we’ll ignite a virtuous cycle:
- At first, Bridge Pledge voters swing a handful of elections to bridgers.
- Politicians will gain incentive to increase collaboration and earn higher bridge scores.
- Bipartisan legislation will incrementally improve.
- Dividers will begin to lose swing voters.
- More mainstream (less fringe) candidates will decide to run (less fear).
- Citizens will see benefit and join our voting alliance (which gets more powerful as we grow).
- Then, more bridgers will win in the next election.
And so on.
There is a way out of the trap. We just have to think different and stop pulling so hard.
Inviting American Voters: Please Join Bridge Pledge
Bridge Pledge, a Project of Mediators Foundation, is a citizen voting alliance unified as a swing bloc to systematically reduce measurable political divisiveness. As cross-partisan citizen voters, we deliberately choose common-ground governance and collaborative politics over individual ideology.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will Bridge Pledge work, though?
Conditions are ripe. The data is stunning.
- There are more independent voters than ever. The number of independents in America is massive, and growing. The April 2024 Gallup poll on political affiliation revealed that 45% of Americans consider themselves independent while just 27% and 25% call themselves straight up Republicans and Democrats respectively.
- The public is fed up. Six in 10 American voters are dissatisfied with how well our democracy is working. Demand is growing for an alternative to the status quo. 85% of Americans want major changes or complete reforms to our political system.
- Citizens see collaboration as an answer. In March, the bipartisan Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service Battleground Civility Poll asked 800 Americans: “Do you believe leaders of different parties finding compromises together can help lower political division in the country?” An astounding 88% answered “Yes” with three quarters adding emphasis (“Strongly Yes”). Eight in nine Americans see bridgers as the path to a less polarized society.
- A small voting bloc can make a difference. In 2022, 20% of Congressional districts were “in play” and close enough (<5%) to be impacted by a swing bloc. Of these 89 such districts, nearly half of the winners in those close races were dividers, equally split between Democrats (22) and Republicans (20). See way below for the list of names. Flipping even half of those elections to bridgers would have changed the composition and perhaps culture of the House.
Exhausted Americans are ready. While everyone mostly agrees we are polarized, there are few ideas on how we might get unstuck from the trap. People are hungry for a fresh idea.
Bridge Pledge has entered the chat.
How many bridgers are in each party? Does one party have more bridgers than the other?
Based on first generation Bridge Grade, we can see the distribution of the 435 grades across both parties for the elected 118th Congress:
Notice that the distribution is pretty close across both parties. Though still crude, we believe this first generation of Bridge Grade is already effective in objectively sorting bridgers from dividers.
Are bridgers centrists?
No. Bridgers should NOT be mistaken for moderates or centrists. They can be, but bridgers span a full range of ideological views.
VoteView.com, a non-partisan initiative to measure the ideology of politicians by analyzing actual voting records, provides an ideology score (measuring left to right) for all politicians. When you plot ideology scores on the horizontal-axis, and the Bridge scores on the vertical-axis, an interesting picture emerges.
One can see that while there is a correlation between extreme ideology and being a divider, there are also many examples in the Grade A group whose ideologies differ quite significantly (see the wide range left-to-right of the dark purple dots).
What is particularly striking in this chart is the clear lack of representation in the middle. The objective of Bridge Pledge is not specifically to choose candidates because they are centrist. No, Bridge Pledge is deliberately NOT about ideology. But by electing bridgers, we will narrow the partisan gap by populating the chart with dots at the top of the chart where ideological overlap and bridging possibilities are more fertile.
Who are the 42 dividers who are most susceptible to the Bridge Pledge alliance?
I know you want to know, so here are the dividers from Bridge Grade’s first generation scoring assessment (ranked by lowest Bridge Score) in districts that are deemed “in-play” from the 2022 elections.
