A Nation for the People / Michelle M. Wu (ePub)

Did you know that the oaths sworn by our federal elected officials require them only to serve the Constitution, not the nation or its people? And did you know that the Constitution built a government structure that today allows the representatives of as few as 16.9% of the people to override the will of the rest of the nation?

These are just two of the reasons why the nation's divides keep growing, and as long as we continue to allow ourselves to be limited to the binary view of the nation as advanced by our major political parties, the splintering of America will continue. Declining to take sides in an artificial fight -- red or blue, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal --- this book instead asks voters to recognize the legitimacy of a multitude of choices. Rather than using our votes to choose a side, thereby encouraging every candidate to disparage their opponents and us to attack each other, the proposal here outlines a way to pressure all candidates from every party to pledge themselves to serve the nation and all of its people.

The narrow margins in elections and in the control of Congress make voters particularly powerful at this point in our history. It requires relatively few people (less than 1% of the electorate) to change the outcomes of critical elections, and if that number of people commits to voting on the apolitical principles described herein, their actions alone can reboot our government. This small number of votes would be immune to most of the mechanisms known to corrupt voting today, not obtainable by money, ads, or power, and yet would be sizable enough to cast the deciding votes in close elections.

The current political playbook does not offer a path for us to vote for our common principles, as opposed to a candidate or a party. Our votes are therefore misused, read as a broad approval for that candidate's or party's actions and then wielded against the nation. The winning party can openly disdain their opponents and their supporters, ignoring the fact that they are obligated by their public office to represent the very people they have just dismissed. This book seeks to illuminate a path to a better government, one that rewards prioritizing the people over self and that deprives politicians of the illusion that winning an election means approval to shape the country according to their personal or party views.