Climate Change…..Our National Debt.…Mass Shootings….Immigration Reform….Infrastructure Investment…..Net Neutrality…..Health Care……Pollution…..etc….

Is your personal party registration more important to you than the challenges we face as a nation?

None of our challenges will be solved by the republican and democratic parties as we know them.

But what if everyone joined the republican party, or the democratic party? What would our nation look like then?

Why your political party registration should be chosen strategically:

Gerrymandering is destroying our country. But it depends on our cooperation. If we didn’t reliably register with the political party that we believe shares our values, the two political parties couldn’t effectively gerrymander. (And our votes would have new value). In other words, elected politicians are picking the voters, voters aren’t picking their representatives.

Gerrymandering effects all politics, even those districts that have not been gerrymandered, because it leads to a polarization of the parties, wherein both parties are more beholden to their extreme wings and their donors than to mainstream America. Each party depends on our distain for the other party and that you are either sentimental or trusting of your chosen party.

“Gerrymandering also tends to magnify the influence of money and big interest groups.” - Cato Institute 

How to regain your vote’s power

If you are an independent or a democrat living in a republican held district, where there is little or no chance that a democrat could win an election, especially if your district has been gerrymandered - you should register as a republican. Because currently, your votes in the primaries have less value. The voting that matters happens in the GOP primary. And you can’t vote then, because you aren’t registered as a republican. But if you register as a republican and vote in the primary, there could be a more moderate republican representing your district. There are enough independents and democrats in your district to influence the election. (Click here to learn more). Furthermore, if you are a republican in a strong republican district, consider registering as a democrat, so that you can ensure that democratic challengers are more mainstream.

And if you are an independent or republican living in a democrat district, register as a democrat for the same reasons. If you do, the gerrymandering that the democrats do so well in their states will lose its effectiveness. You can vote for more moderate democrats in the primary, where your vote will matter more than in the GOP primary. And if you are a democrat living in a democrat district, you should register as a republican. You will help to moderate the selection of the GOP candidates in the primaries.

Any eligible voter can do this , and in 2020, your vote will count for something.

The Stakes are high

There are major problems we face as a society, problems where the majority of our country agrees that something must be done, and where almost any action is better than inaction. But progress cannot occur in our current politial environment. These issues include - gun control, the national debt, education reform, health care reform, and climate change. The two parties can’t even agree on how to maintain and modernize our infrastructure. And it is in part because special interests are demanding policies that are at odds with the general public’s best interests.

The issues have become so tied up in our politics, that politicians regularly vote only for their party’s stated right wing or left wing positions. There is no compromise and therefor, no lasting solution to our most pressing problems. At best, if there is legislation, we swerve in one direction and then the other.

These problems are unsolvable without immediately addressing the fallout from gerrymandering. It is the single greatest cause of our polarized political system. Changing gerrymandering through ballot initiatives is helpful, but could take decades. ……….But you have the power to eliminate the power of gerrymandering on your vote, and in doing so, elect more moderate candidates who will work across the aisle to solve our most pressing problems.

Heaven knows that the political parties care more about themselves than about solving our problems. If the democrats were more concerned about problems like global warming than they were about protecting their own power, they would have unilaterally abandoned gerrymandering long ago and we would be solving the global warming problem today, instead of fighting about whether it even exists. But they haven’t done that, have they? (Click here for reasons the democratic party leadership would have to protect gerrymandering).

If you aren’t going to vote for the candidate in your new party you would most want to govern, then stay with your current party. This initiative isn’t for you.

Why would strategic registration help?

Why is it necessary?

We have given the politicians their power over us – by registering for the party that we believe shares your values. We register to vote our values, but because of our registration, our votes don’t count. Because politicians use our registration to disenfranchise us through gerrymandering.

You Help Them Gerrymander 

Georgia, North Carolina and Maryland are good examples of the political parties

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/91818404-132.html

When you register with a political party based on your approval of that party’s policies, you help the two parties to gerrymander, and you disenfranchise yourself and your neighbors. When you register, they then know where you live and they know you won’t be voting in the stronger party’s primary. Based on your party affiliation, they know how you are likely to vote in the general election. Knowing that, and knowing where you live, they draw their politicians into safe seats which include enough of their reliable party members in the district to nearly guarantee that party’s representative is elected.

The voters in the opposing party in gerrymandered districts are effectively disenfranchised by themselves - because they have registered to vote for the losing party. Their general election vote is largely worthless because they are sorely outnumbered in their district. (They should have registered for the party that doesn’t share their values but that holds power). ………A voter registration also tells the leading political party where they should place your polling station so that it is difficult for you to access.

Since we cannot stop the parties from knowing where we live and our party registration, and they are allowed to use that political affiliation information against us, we need to do everything we can to protect our rights. One way to do that is to always register for the party that is in power in your state (and/or district). If everyone in a state was registered to the same political party, politicians would lose much of their ability to disenfranchise us through gerrymandering. They have rigged the general election through gerrymandering. It will be much harder to rig the primaries. (Look at the most notoriously bad gerrymandered states here)

Your political party registration is your most powerful political asset because it dictates all your other voting choices – it dictates whether your vote will have zero or some influence in the election. And yet, we sign it away to the political parties so they can put us in a box, where they can then ignore us. From your party registration all other power flows - because it allows you to vote in a primary election, and whoever wins the primary election in most districts is guaranteed to win the general election. But we are wasting our votes by affiliating with parties based on our affection for their leaders and policies. Through gerrymandering, general elections are most often a rigged election where one party is guaranteed election.

 Compared to other countries, where there is no such thing as gerrymandering, our electoral process is a sham. The founders of this great nation would be furious to see how their promising experiment in government for the people, by the people, is currently failing to be for or by the people.