Our government isn’t working like it should. Consensus solutions to major issues remain unadapted and unimplemented because our political system has broken down and does not generate the outcomes that Americans need, want or deserve. While this is especially true in Washington, we see warning signs that this cancer plaguing our democratic republic is malignant and has spread even to the State House in Augusta.
We need to pop the hood and tune up our American democracy.
It’s not big corporations or wealthy individuals who are hurt by today’s political polarization and gridlock, it’s everyday Americans who need government to work and solve problems that impact our daily lives — from the student loan crisis to the skyrocketing cost of health care.
My friend and colleague Katherine Gehl, a retired CEO turned political reformer, cast our modern problem in a different light when she said, “Our political system isn’t broken, it’s doing exactly what it is supposed to do.”
The truth is that big corporations, wealthy individuals and special interests — the few — have slowly and methodically rewritten the rules governing our democracy to benefit themselves at the expense of middle and working class Americans — the many.
They’ve done this with our elections laws, health care laws, tax and regulatory laws, banking and bankruptcy laws, and so on. If we want different outputs, we need to change the inputs.
Think of government as a machine — a system of gears designed to produce a certain product — a functioning politics and government. But like any machine, over time our political system has been realigned and reprogrammed to produce different outputs.
Clean Elections is an important part of the solution to counter this misalignment of political machinery because it allows more everyday people without connections and money — especially women and people of color — to run for office, compete and win.
Ranked Choice Voting is an important solution to today’s political crisis because it gives more choice to voters and allows independent and third party candidates to compete without the spoiler label, thus serving a necessary role in our republic to introduce new ideas and hold the major parties accountable for positive adaptation that ultimately serves the Maine people.
Voter apathy and suppression are tools of the few to disempower everyday people and to convince us to turn the keys to the kingdom over to the “deserving,” the “haves” who “know best” at the expense of us, the many, the “have nots.”
In every way that wealth and power seek to silence the masses, we must fight back. That includes preventing wealthy foreign governments from influencing our elections and wealthy billionaires from spending unlimited, unchecked amounts of money in our democratic processes to bend its machinery to their will.
Protect Maine Elections is leading this fight, and I encourage you to not only sign this petition at the polls on Election Day to place this question on the November 2022 ballot but ask you to please collect signatures. This is a fight that needs engagement from good people of all walks of life and of all political stripes.
Fixing our broken political system and reforming it to work for the people does not begin or end with the latest reform. There are no once and done fixes and no silver bullets.
America is an experiment. Experiments require constant attention and adaptation to, in the case of our republic, defeat the privileged and power hungry both at home and abroad who would remake America to benefit the wants of the few over the needs of the many. America is a dream worth saving and strengthening, and securing as the last great hope of this earth — the signal to the rest of the world that of, by and for the people shall never perish.
Rep. Kyle Bailey, D-Gorham, is serving his first term in the Maine House of Representatives. You can reach him by emailing kyle.bailey@legislature.maine.gov or calling (207) 939-8600.