Henry Murray is a student at Tufts University from Lawrenceville, New Jersey. He is entering his junior year and studying international relations.
As a college student who, like many of my classmates, is frustrated with politics in America, I’d like to reimagine our congressional elections. Our country’s two major political parties have become increasingly one dimensional and stubborn, the result being a paralysis of democratic processes. The youth of this country, a majority of which are not aligned with either party, present an opportunity for change. However, energizing my generation will not be enough to improve our democratic process. Significant institutional reform must occur to facilitate real progress toward a healthier democracy. Open primaries, ranked choice voting, and instant runoff elections are a few of many reforms that could play a big part motivating the youth by creating a less partisan legislature.
Youth voters are characterized as those ages 18 to 29. As a 20 year old, I fall on the younger end, but through my friends and older siblings, I feel connected to the group as a whole. While many refer to our generations as a monolithic voting block that is purely a boost for the left, in reality, young people of the United States are diverse and complex.
According to the Center For Information & Research On Civic Learning And Engagement, 38 percent of youth voters do not identify with one of the two major political parties. The plurality of people around my age are independent, but they have not yet made their full impact known because, as CIRCLE reports, they have been “neglected by campaigns.” The largest group of young voters who did not vote in the 2022 midterm elections were those not aligned with a major political party.
When I ask my friends about politics, I often receive answers like: “I don’t do politics,” “I don’t like politicians,” or “it doesn’t matter.” I don’t believe these answers indicate young people don’t care about the government or democracy but instead are disengaged from and uninspired by politics because of the extreme hyper-partisanship. The deep divide in our country has made politics so contentious that many young people don’t want to be associated with either side and thus don’t vote. Plus, the negative effects of gerrymandering that result in congressional districts that always vote Democratic or Republican discourage young voters from believing their vote will change anything.
Youth voters feel powerless and unrepresented in today's political world. A well-functioning democracy is dependent on a high rate of political participation. This should be enough reason to encourage more political representation of and outreach to young people in America. Unfortunately, just wanting less polarization will not bring it about. Without an understanding of its root causes and actions leading to change, the voice of the people will continue to be unheard.
Gerrymandering obstructs our ability to hold fair and competitive elections. Many Congressional districts are mapped in a way that predetermines results and renders many votes useless. When a party is all but guaranteed to win in a district, the minority votes and even the excess majority votes essentially don’t matter. The elections are also decided on a plurality, so even if there is significant support for the minority, they can still be left with no representation. For example, in my home state of Massachusetts in the 2012 house elections 30 percent of the vote went to the Republicans, but they didn’t win any seats.
Many organizations have proposed and some state and local governments have tried different election formats to combat the gerrymandering problem. Among them are open primaries, ranked choice voting, term limits, multi member districts, proportional representation, and bigger general election ballots. One option that combines several of these strategies and to me, is particularly applicable to the concerns of the youth, is final-five voting. Democracy Found, an organization started by Katherine Gehl and Austin Ramirez, has developed a voting system “designed to address the electoral incentives that lead to partisan gridlock.” Final-five voting features an open primary that sends the top five candidates into a general election that uses ranked choice voting and instant runoffs to ensure that the winning candidate has a majority.
With final-five voting, independent voters would feel like our vote means something. Candidates would need to appeal to the majority of voters, and with a broader range to choose from, independently minded young people might find someone who they feel represents and relates to them rather than having to vote for the lesser of two evils.
The road to a healthy democracy is a two-way street. My generation must actively learn more about politics and voting and become more involved. At the same time political parties need to be more proactive about reaching out to the younger generations. And lastly voting reform is required to make everyone's vote count.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.