When did America start fearing competition?
The United States has racked up an impressive count of 2,959 Olympic medals—a feat that no other country comes close to matching. This is a testament to American values of hard work, commitment, and pride—our desire to face competition and come out ahead. Yet, it seems like this belief doesn’t apply to our politics anymore. Instead of ensuring the system allows for a competition of innovative ideas, our political system is more concentrated on keeping the same people in power. This shift doesn’t seem to fit with our American identity.
A Competitive Ecosystem Builds a Striving Community
The people in power have forgotten that competition drives America. This is where the Forward Party steps in. Forward is actively fighting to increase awareness of the need to bolster competition and offer Americans a wider, more appealing array of choices in elections nationwide. The political system has become stagnant with a visible lack of accountability.
Alternative Voting Solutions
Election outcomes are tallied by using a variety of methods such as plurality systems, majority systems, and ranked-choice voting systems. How the electoral system operates also varies state by state and by election type.
For example, all gubernatorial elections are, by nature of the office, single-winner type elections. Of the 50 states, 45 determine the winners of gubernatorial elections via plurality vote. Three of the remaining five (Louisiana, Georgia, and Mississippi) determine winners via majority vote. And finally, Maine and Alaska have started using ranked-choice voting since 2016 and 2020, respectively.
Ranked-choice voting, sometimes referred to as RCV, is an increasingly popular reform that brings several benefits:
- Promotes majority support: Ranked-choice voting ensures that the winning candidate has the support of a majority of voters. This is because the candidate who wins must receive more than 50% of the votes, which means they have to be the preferred candidate of a majority of voters.
- Reduces strategic voting: In a traditional “first-past-the-post” system, voters may feel pressured to vote for the “lesser of two evils” instead of their preferred candidate to avoid “wasting” their vote. Ranked-choice voting eliminates this issue by allowing voters to rank their preferred candidates in order, without worrying about spoilers or wasted votes.
- Encourages positive campaigning: Candidates in a ranked-choice voting system are incentivized to reach out to a broader range of voters and appeal to a wider base of support, rather than just their core supporters. This can lead to more positive campaigning and fewer negative attacks on opponents.
- Saves money: By eliminating the need for primary elections and runoffs, ranked-choice voting can save money for both taxpayers and campaigns. It can also increase voter turnout by reducing the number of times voters need to go to the polls.
The Only Way Forward is With Your Help
The Forward Party is bringing Democrats, Republicans, and Independents together to build a new kind of political party that returns power to the people. Competition in our political system has been drowned so much that 70% of over 500,000 elective positions across the country go uncontested. It’s time to bring more choices and better voices back to the American political system.
