The state of American politics and the treatment of our fellow citizens has gotten drastically out of hand. People are now seeing each other as just that, the other. Families have been torn apart, coworkers are unable to cooperate, and our very own U.S. Congress refuses to work with each other. Congress, and so many others in this country, feel that any sign of working across the isle will garner hateful backlash from their peers and constituents. This has led our country to be at an effective gridlock for the past 20 years or so. Ever since I was born, all I have seen in our government is continued bickering and squabbling over mundane trivialities and semantics while our people continue to wage wars on each other. Our representatives are elected to represent us, our wants and needs. Congress has become so bogged down with the minutia of something not having a plethora of additional unrelated bills stamped onto important bills that we are no longer functioning at the capacity we should be. This also "trickles down" into the lives of private citizens, and given that all of these issues center around the party based system, I believe it is finally time we put into law what our first President so desperately warned us about. The following is an excerpt from President George Washington's Farewell Address where he speaks to issues that arise in a party based system:

"They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests." - George Washington, Transcript of President George Washington's Farewell Address (1796)

I implore you, my fellow citizens, to sign and help get this petition passed into law. I know all of you see the state that we have gotten ourselves into, how the fighting never seems to stop. While parties have had their fair share of good intentions and change, I believe they have outlived their welcome. And to Congress and our President I ask you this: Do you want to continue fighting amongst yourselves, even though you know that there is so much good you could do, so much wrong you could right, if you could simply put down your pitchforks and take up your quills so that this nation can get back on track to solve the problems it so desperately needs to instead of just arguing and bickering all day long?