By Lloyd Metcalf

What if there were no parties?
When I was a young kid I recall going to vote with my father. The whole ride to the town hall, he explained how it was a civic duty, gave people a voice, and how he felt we were obligated to do this small thing to maintain our system of government and affect how things work.

He checked in at the town hall and I followed him into the voting booth. Once there he scanned through the items on the ballot. Being small-town Maine, there weren’t many items to consider. Many of the usual offices were open that year — town selectmen, road commissioner, animal control, and some others I don’t recall. He said, “The thing to do is, go down through and look for this letter” — the letter indicating his party of choice. “Those are the people we want to vote for.”

In short order we were done, but it sat with me a little funny that he voted this way. He wanted a voice, he felt a civic duty, and yet knew very little about the people for whom he had just cast his vote. I never put heavy thought to this until much later in life when I found myself standing in a voting booth at 18 or 19. I honestly felt a heavy burden, as if my vote was helping shape the society in which I lived, but I had no real idea what I was doing or for whom I was voting.

What if
What if there were no political party affiliations? How would that affect what you do, who you vote for, or what your voting process would be? How would it affect governmental operation and cooperation?

Political opinions and approaches can be nuanced things with wide-ranging subtleties, and yet America is heavily divided down the middle between Democrat and Republican. “Left and Right,” conservative and liberal, no matter what words are used, there are two parties that drive American politics and policy. Australia has no less than THIRTEEN parties that have an influence in Senate or House of Representatives. Tunisia has more than 200 recognized political parties!!

When you go to vote, do you know anything about the people on the ballot beyond their name and if they have a (D) or (R) after their name? Do you vote like my dad did (pick one letter and check them all off)? Or do you look at each candidate, who they are, what qualifications they bring and how they voted on your key concerns in the past?

If you look at their profiles, quotes and previous votes with your two-party filter on, you are likely seeking a way to praise or fault more than you are considering what their goals in office might be or how they qualify for the position.

How would it look without D’s and R’s?
If you were to go to the voting booth with no information about party affiliation, or hear about party affiliation in the media, online or anywhere else, how would you decide who gets your vote in the booth? Would you base it on one or two speeches you saw online? What religion they are? Would you base it by who your family might vote for? Would you still seek to figure out if they toe a party line to group them into a general pile?

Let’s face it, most voters are lazy. I’ll be so bold as to group myself in the lazy heap as well. We likely don’t honestly know how most of our representatives have voted on issues in the past unless it breaks into the news. We make assumptions about how they will vote based on their party affiliation.

Who is your county representative? What district are you in? Who is your district legislator? What was the last thing they voted on and why? The good news is that we have the internet, and that information IS available. The bad news is, most voters never take advantage of this mountain of potential information. We pick a party line and vote for the letter of a party, not a person. Yes, there are some fringe parties in America, but two hold power consistently.

I challenge you to spend a little time on the websites of your local representative or legislator and push yourself away from preconceived knowledge of party lines to see what that person is voting for and saying on your behalf as your representative to the government.

Without knowing about party affiliations, people need to pull on other knowledge to make voting decisions. Those decisions would likely be on issues that are important to the voter immediately.

When I hear or read sweeping generalizations about Democrats or Republicans, I wince a bit at the hit. What the statement is likely saying is how a lobbying group has affected a vote on an issue important to that person. Not how every member of that party feels on the issue.

Why are we divided?
I can’t help but wonder why we are so divided. Why are we so encouraged to be deeply divided? Is it the old strategy of “Divide and Conquer” that we fall victim to? Is it that we’re lazy and it’s easier to group people into “friends” and “enemies”? Do we not want to put in the effort to discover qualities about the people representing us to the world? Neither side of a two-party system is ever going to “win.” We share our society daily with different political affiliations. Who has the most to gain from a country’s people remaining deeply divided on how laws are made and executed?

We all have a little more power than we think. In Maine you can easily find your district legislator on this site: http://legislature.maine.gov/house/townlist.htm. They have contact information there, phone numbers, and records of how and what they voted on. These people are in office to help you submit new or better laws if you want them voted on. Your legislator might not be the same party as you, but they are somebody in your town. A face you might know. In an age of celebrities making bids on the highest office, it might be time to break down the two-party line with your neighbor and see what things you agree on before casting them into your list of enemies.