Could we lessen partisanship in Congress by creating non-partisan elections?
366142
I used to live in Nebraska and while they no longer list the candidate's party on official voter information and forms the legislature is still made up of officials that belong to political parties and who tend to vote along party lines.
444795
No, and maybe. It depends on if a democratic majority is returned to congress this year, if we leave it for the repulicans it will never happen.
1031682
I don't think social change can happen through Party politics, at least not now. Congress is so polarized they couldn't order pizza together, never mind effect any kind of positive social change. \n\nI think change will have to come from outside, with popular opinion driving Congress, not the other way around. I think that's what's starting to happen with immigration, and to some extent, the war.\n\nBi-partisanism should be the way positive social change is forged. Unfortunately, that's not likely to happen any time soon.
704315
Yes, because part of the "choice" in a democracy is not to vote for anyone at all. (Although a "none of the above" option on a ballot would suffice for that.)  The problem is that Americans don't believe that they have a duty to vote.
719943
We are not a Democracy. We are a representative republic. It would lead to chaos if everything that was decided went up to vote. This way you vote the representative in and if the decisions are bad ones you vote them back out. The system has a lot of checks and balances so things that are controversial can't be done quickly.
976556
It would be nice, but, unfortunately, the average voting American is ignorant of the facts. Politicians use emotion to get people to back a bad idea, and most people just aren't smart enough to figure out the truth on their own.\n\nThey use silly names like "The Fairness Doctrine" which was anything but fair. If you don't know what that was, look it up. Thank God it went away. However, I expect the Democrats to bring it back in order to silence the conservative viewpoint.
788910
if you mean gerrymandering, which is drawing up districts differently, then yu can have certain areas with a denser population of a certain party, so that that party is more likely to gain that seat in the jouse of representitives.  it's a process that can be both helpful and detrimental to our political system depending on who is drawing the new districts, ie: those who are partial or those with political agendas
15172
I'm no constitutional expert, but technically you may be right.  In the political arena, it's a different matter.  I think that using the filibuster has been the only way the Democrats have had to achieve any kind of bipartisan process.  I realize the majority party rules, but the days of at least some give and take between the aisles are long gone.  I think the threat of filibuster has given the minority party more of a place at the table then they had.
956135
Damn good plan.  It is too hard for people to run non-partisan web sites now a days.  Maybe we should contact our Secretary of State and suggest this idea and see what they say.
1168966
absolutely. If "none of the above" gets the most votes, the whole process starts over with 2 new candidates. That would be awesome. Never happen though...
668905
I don't think that we need these parties, It'd be a lot better if we could base our votes on a candidate by who he/she really is, not just on weather he/she is a liberal or conservative.
507326
The only way I see americans voting someone other than the two leading parties is if a third party were to break away from one of the major parties. It's happened before. The Republican party was started from the Whig party. I could see \nAmericans voting for a third party who had a platform of ridding the government of rampant corruption and getting us out of Iraq.
772127
It's a grand idea and I support the thought, but it will never happen. Politics is rooted in ideology. Even moderates are ideological in nature, they just do not follow the complete ideologies of the party structures. Those who are political enough to engage in the debate believe their position is the right one. Because we are rooted in ideology attacks against these beliefs will almost always produce visceral results and responses. In short, smear tactics work. The best you can hope for is that at least part of the electorate will be informed and make decisions based on facts rather than emotions. As for the rest, all I can say is voting is a right and while Democracy may not be perfect, it still beats the alternatives.
980440
You know?.. that wouldn't be a bad Idea, the states that vote republican could live with their own consequences, without messing up everything for the rest of us.. each party would be responsible for it's own half of the deficit.. then we would see which party did the best job.. PS.. split the house, senate and presidency up, they only argue without getting anything done anyway, and they would only be able to live off the budget of the states that voted for them.. good idea, but how to have something like that pass?.
1059255
Well, how can you separate the judiciary from their own political interpretations of the law?\n\nThere will always be, not partisanship per se, but philosophical differences in what the Constitution means, despite the numerous and quite specific interpretation as written by those who actually crafted the Constitution.\n\nThere are those who view the Constitution as a flexible document that means nothing but what they decide it means, which could change for no reason. There are those who [correctly] view it as a rigid document that specifically defines the limits of government, and is a standing contract between the government and the peoples.\n\nThere are those who inflict us with their own personal social philosophies, and effectively legislate from the bench, a severe Constitutional violation, which should result in impeachment, if Congress had any ethics or integrity.\n\nBut there are too many jurists who freely violate the Constitution and ignore it, in order to implement their philosophical social visions. More people should be outraged about this.
742750
I actually agree on both ends... though I believe that all of those things apply to both sides at one point or another in their own way. Extreme Partisanship is tearing this nation apart from it's roots on up. We keep this up, and we'll instigate a third World War and another American civil war in the same sweeping move and be entirely destroyed before it's done.
29532
I think the first thing would be to stop all the corporate lobbyists and various activists from purchasing politicians. Get the payola out of the picture, and soon you'd have an honest debate based on what people want, not what powerful interests want.