An Open Letter to the next Congress.

You don’t build highways and roads without adding joints for flexibility, otherwise a rigid road is susceptible to fissures and prone to break apart. Road joints are discontinuities in the concrete pavement that are necessary to allow for expansion, contraction, and warping. It’s what allows our highway system to work over long stretches of diverse climates and landscapes from coast to coast. 

The same thought concept can be applied to our own system of democracy. If you can imagine democracy as the road that we have all been traveling, perhaps more rigid over certain stretches of time than others - then we the electorate, and our system of casting ballots for our representation in government every two to four years, become the constructed joints that help to keep this most important road in working order. The flexibility to bend our government in a direction that follows the will of the people is a fundamental component of our democracy, and the one thing that allows us to continually drive this great American experiment towards a more perfect union. 

Election cycles can only provide this flexibility however when the voice and vote of each and every citizen is counted. Any effort to suppress or delegitimize the will of the people should be met with a swift rebuttal from the electorate. One voice. One vote. That is what a democracy should look like. 

A true democracy does not favor party or its politicians. It does not seek to gerrymander or suppress the electorate. It is the most important tool of ‘We the people’ to maintain fair representation across a diverse and often divided landscape of political and social opinions. 

Similarly, our greatest American roads and transcontinental highways run a course through this country that is as diverse as the urban landscapes, sprawling suburbs, and large rural communities they connect. They loom large near our shining cities and appropriately recede as they cut cross the the Great Plains. Through our majestic mountain ranges and dense forrest’s, across desert flats and rich farmlands, we are all connected by this same road. 

Regardless of ones political stripes, we believe that we share a common hope, if not a vision for a future that is better for ourselves and our children. The road to get there, our democracy, is being built each day. That said, if our democracy is to stand the test of time, and continue to propel us forward, we need to enact new and stronger laws that expand our voting rights and empower citizens to have their voices heard. 

There are no new arguments to present here, but rather ideas that make for common sense solutions that we need to enact now. To begin, expanded and early voting must become the new norm. Thanks in part to the pandemic, the availability of early voting across more states this year has already yielded success in bringing people out to cast their votes. Over 90 million people have had an opportunity to cast their ballots in advance of Nov 3rd. Whomever you cast your vote for - we are all fortunate to have more time and flexibility to do so.

Secondly, a National Election Holiday must finally be instituted in this country. Giving citizens across the United States a National day off to vote is the next, and most logical step for our government to undertake in expanding voting access to all of its citizens. People should not be forced to choose between showing up for a paycheck or participating in shaping the future of the country in a way that could have meaningful impact on their lives for generations to come. A National Election Holiday is the low-hanging fruit that any responsible democratic government should work to immediately pass into law. 

The third prong, albeit a more complicated overhaul to our democratic process, should be reimagining, if not completely eliminating the electoral college system. Its outdated mechanism has suppressed the will of the majority of the people too frequently in modern history to not be addressed without repercussions. Its influence in determining election outcomes that went against the will of the popular voting majority in both the 2000 and 2016 elections have served to disenfranchise and disillusion citizens on all sides of the political spectrum from participating in our democracy. To ask people to invest themselves into anything, they need to feel that their ideas are valued. Our democracy is no different. 

Enacting some of these changes shouldn’t be hard. They shouldn’t be controversial. Any form of voter suppression is abhorrent to the principals that this country was founded on. No political party should have a monopoly on the future of our democracy. These are values we should all share as Americans first and foremost. The political pendulum will always swing. The biggest and most pressing infrastructure project that the next congress should take on, is the one to repair the road that is our democracy. 

We ask our representatives to work together to find common ground, and enact policies that ensure that every vote for every citizen counts!