How To Save Our Constitutional Republic

Written by:  Emma Jimenez- News Director for LUCA

To Save Our Constitutional Republic, “We the People” Must Abolish the Two-Party System

The polarization that firmly grips the United States today lies in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

America has a love-hate relationship with the two-party system. A power struggle where each party claims superiority and righteousness over the other with no middle ground.

There is also a silenced minority of centrists that are left voiceless and unrepresented.

Since the 1796 election, where candidates at all levels ran under the banners of two organized, oppositional political parties: The Federalist Party and the anti-federalist Democratic-Republican Party — our country has stayed divided, with political parties seizing control of government and winning legislative disputes that have only intensified their power to subvert and exploit the American people and weaken our nation.

Both Republicans and Democrats view not just the opposing party but also the people within that party in a negative light.

According to the latest research by Pew Center, growing shares of Republicans and Democrats say members of the other party are more “immoral, dishonest, closed-minded than other Americans.”

The two-party system has become so deeply ingrained in our political reality that we view it as an essential part of our American culture. It would shock many Americans that a two-party system is nowhere in the Constitution and that our founding fathers strongly opposed it.

Nearing the end of his second presidential term, the founding father of the United States, George Washington, in his farewell address of 1796, advised and warned citizens of the United States against the danger of political parties and to remain neutral in foreign conflicts. Washington’s farewell address was intended to guide future statecraft for the American public and his successors in office. Washington distrusted permanent political parties, fearing they would become “too powerful.”

John Adams, political philosopher and second President of the United States, referred to the two-party system as

“the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

In a letter to Jonathan Jackson in October 1780, Adams writes:

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” 

In a letter to John Dickinson on July 23, 1801, Thomas Jefferson, Adams’ rival in this emerging two-party system, writes:

“The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people.”

Political rivalry, political idolization, public slander and defamation, endless wars, violations of fundamental civil liberties, unconsented wealth redistribution, and government overreach are just a few of the many issues created within the two-party system.

What good is a political party if it can’t help you govern effectively and push through important legislation?

Here are three ways we can help restore our constitutional republic: 

1) Running on a non-partisan platform: By running on a non-partisan platform, political candidates would be forced to highlight and argue the merits of their proposals — not merely appeal to their political parties.

2) Doing away with mail-in ballots: Mail-in ballots are the most vulnerable to being altered, stolen, or forged. The likelihood of voter fraud is somewhat higher with mail ballots.

3) Same-day voting: Same-day voter registration allows individuals to register to vote at the polls on the day they vote. A most recent study by the University of Massachusetts concluded that amongst Blacks and Hispanics, same-day voter registration had a higher turnout.

In summary: Neither side has a chance of becoming the dominant party in the near future. The only way to save our constitutional republic is to abolish the two-party system, do away with mail ballots, implement a policy that allows American voters to cast their votes on the same day in a national primary, restore our founding governmental system of a limited-government republic which in return will promote and ensure a government that benefits and reclaims our forefathers’ vision of a Union governed “Of the People, By the People, For the People.”