• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Independent Voter News
  • Campaign Finance
  • Civic Ed
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Events
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. forward party>

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman
December 27, 2022
Forward Party for political reform
gguy44/Getty Images

Whitman is a former Republican governor of New Jersey and co-chair of the Forward Party.

The two dominant political parties in America don’t agree on much, but there is one thing they agree on: The system should be set up to help them maintain their power. From first-past-the-post voting and gerrymandering to limiting citizen-powered ballot initiatives, Republicans and Democrats have done their best to build a system that strips the power from the people and keeps it in the parties’ hands.

Voters are fighting back, however. And we will all be the better for it.

The headlines of the 2022 elections focused, of course, on control of the House, Senate and governors’ mansions. But the subhead — easy to miss — was a wave of reforms, particularly for ranked-choice voting. Nevada led the way, passing a ballot measure which will institute the practice across the entire state if it passes again in two years. Nine other cities and counties also voted on voting reform, with RCV passing in seven of them. If you factor in approval voting reforms that have passed — a similar change to our method of voting — more than 15 million Americans will be able to more freely express their politics through new and better election processes in the coming years.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

With an 80 percent electoral success rate, it’s hard to imagine an issue more popular right now than citizen-powered reform. With all of the enthusiasm behind these reforms, you might think that the major parties would be clamoring to support them. Sadly, their desire to keep power to themselves is causing them to fight against these improvements. There’s only one national party working for reforms that empower the people and give them choice: the Forward Party.


In Connecticut, the Griebel Frank Party — part of the Forward Party Alliance — endorsed Democratic Gov. Ned LaMont after he came out in favor of RCV and said he’d support legislation implementing it in the state. In Nevada, a coalition of reformers, including many Forward in-state leaders, led the charge to pass the RCV ballot initiative.

Compare that with two states where the existing parties tried to use the initiative process itself to make electoral reform more difficult, or even impossible. In Arkansas, they tried to require a supermajority for ballot initiatives. In Arizona, the Legislature wanted the power to change or repeal these initiatives entirely. Both efforts were rejected by voters who cherish their right to self rule.

Unfortunately, in 24 more states — almost half the country — the parties have effectively ended the ability for citizens to lead reform through referenda or ballot initiatives. Reform is left entirely up to the people who are usually least interested in it — the elected leaders of the legacy parties.

Putting electoral reform on the ballot in those states means electing reformers to office. And to do that, we first must recruit them and put them on the ballot. Republican and Democratic leaders aren’t interested in that. The Nevada Democratic Party fought ranked-choice voting as stridently as the Alaska GOP has.

And so, if we want a new kind of politics across the country — a better politics — it can’t come from within the same staid parties that only work together when it protects their mutual power. They’ll band together to fight against returning choice and power to the American people. Reform has to come from outside the system — and that’s where the Forward Party comes in. The Forward Party will be the vehicle for true reformers to run for office.

And we will win.

We are building our state party infrastructures and getting access to the ballot in key states across the country. Forward candidates will be on the ballot in 2023, and we will embrace the reformers who get tossed aside by the existing parties as a threat to their stranglehold on our political processes.

Republican and Democratic party leaders would like you to think that there is no better way than the status quo. But America is waking up from that deterministic thinking. Many things define a Forward Party member, but perhaps the most fundamental trait is that we won’t stop looking for a better way to get things done.

That is our calling now: to take off the blinders and examine in earnest the system that has brought us to this era of discontent and discord. And then, just as countless brave Americans before us have done, get to the work of making a better, freer, more equitable system. Let’s undertake that patriotic work together, starting today.

From Your Site Articles
  • Podcast: Andrew Yang & toppling the two-party duopoly ›
  • The new Forward Party wants to be a player in 2022 ›
  • The Forward Party: Centrist parties coalesce around depolarization, bottom-up politics ›
  • Forward Party to endorse midterm candidates this week ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • What will Andrew Yang's Forward Party do next? - Deseret News ›
  • New Forward Party Seeks Center Stage in US Politics ›
  • Opinion | Most third parties have failed. Here's why our Forward ... ›
  • Forward Party ›
forward party

Join an Upcoming Event

Democracy Happy Hour

Fix Democracy First
Oct 04, 2023 at 5:00 pm PDT
Read More

Democracy Happy Hour

Fix Democracy First
Oct 11, 2023 at 5:00 pm PDT
Read More

Oregon STAR Voting Monthly Meeting

Equal Vote
Oct 11, 2023 at 6:00 pm PDT
Read More

STAR Voting Oregon Chapter Meeting

Equal Vote
Oct 11, 2023 at 6:00 pm CDT
Read More

American Promise National Volunteer Call

American Promise
Oct 11, 2023 at 8:00 pm CDT
Read More

NH United: Bringing Granite Staters Together in Rye

The People
Oct 12, 2023 at 6:30 pm EDT
Read More
View All Events

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Confirm that you are not a bot.
×
Follow

Support Democracy Journalism; Join The Fulcrum

The Fulcrum daily platform is where insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk, and act to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives. Now more than ever our democracy needs a trustworthy outlet

Contribute
Contributors

Grand Canyon gap in America today

Dave Anderson

Chief Justice John Roberts and Chief Justice Roger Taney are Twins– separated by only 165 years

Stephen E. Herbits

Conservatives attacking Americans’ First Amendment rights

Steve Corbin

To advance racial equity, policy makers must move away from the "Black and Brown" discourse

Julio A. Alicea

Policymakers must address worsening civil unrest post Roe

Sarah K. Burke

Video: How to salvage U.S. democracy from the "tyranny of the minority"

Our Staff
latest News

What really are “special interests” in Washington - and how they influence Congress

Bradford Fitch
21h

The kids are alright: The younger generation’s inspiring legal fight against climate change

David J. Toscano
22h

Living wisely: Addressing economic faults for a sustainable future

Leland R. Beaumont
22h

The American school meal debate: It all comes down to food as market goods or public goods

C.Anne Long
02 October

It’s time to retire Calvinism

Debilyn Molineaux
02 October

Podcast: On democracy and its current torments

Our Staff
02 October
Videos
Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Our Staff
Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Our Staff
Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Our Staff
Video: The history of Labor Day

Video: The history of Labor Day

Our Staff
Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Our Staff
Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: On democracy and its current torments

Our Staff
02 October

Podcast: Is reunification still possible?

Our Staff
27 September

Podcast: All politics is local

Our Staff
22 September

Podcast: How states hold fair elections

Our Staff
14 September
Recommended
What really are “special interests” in Washington - and how they influence Congress

What really are “special interests” in Washington - and how they influence Congress

Contributors
The kids are alright: The younger generation’s inspiring legal fight against climate change

The kids are alright: The younger generation’s inspiring legal fight against climate change

Big Picture
Living wisely: Addressing economic faults for a sustainable future

Living wisely: Addressing economic faults for a sustainable future

Corporate Responsibility
The American school meal debate: It all comes down to food as market goods or public goods

The American school meal debate: It all comes down to food as market goods or public goods

State
It’s time to retire Calvinism

It’s time to retire Calvinism

Contributors
Podcast: On democracy and its current torments

Podcast: On democracy and its current torments

Podcasts