America Is Hungry for New and Better Political Options | Opinion

Americans are fed up with our current political system. President Biden's approval rating has been sitting in the low 40s for most of his presidency. Congress is sitting at 20 percent. Even the Supreme Court, long seen as the branch with the best reputation, is currently sitting underwater, at 40 percent approval vs. 58 percent disapproval.

This shouldn't surprise anyone. Congress has gotten into debt ceiling fights almost like clockwork for the past decade. The Supreme Court has been overturning decades of precedent, even on issues that were widely viewed as settled like Roe v. Wade. If anything, it's fair to say that our current leaders are creating new problems rather than solving long-standing ones like our broken infrastructure, overwhelmed immigration system, and failing public education.

This reality has led Americans to grow hungry for new and better options. Seventy-five percent of the country is effectively under single-party rule, and both the Republicans and Democrats have given up on even trying to contest in vast areas of America. Nearly three out of five Americans believe a new political party is needed, and younger generations are showing even less of a desire to continue to operate in our two-party system. Only 40 percent of Americans think that the two parties are doing an adequate job of representing them. Independents and unaffiliated voters are the largest voting bloc by far, and, with the two parties seeing their membership decline precipitously, there are almost more independent voters than Democrats and Republicans combined.

What's driving this? A belief that the two parties are increasingly catering to their bases and the extremes. That's a feature of our current system, not a bug.

In our current system, most states have closed party primaries to determine candidates for the general election. Since these primaries freeze out independents, and only the most partisan members of each party vote in them, the candidates that are selected are the ones that most appeal to the fringes of each party. The incentives of our system promote the continued polarization of our elected officials. In the current system, good policy doesn't matter—because neither side has an incentive to fix problems that they can instead use to bash the other side while fundraising to fuel the machine. We're behind the curve on addressing past issues, let alone things like AI policy.

This is why a key part of the Forward Party's values-based platform is dedicated to democracy reform efforts. We need reforms such as open, nonpartisan primaries and ranked-choice voting to give everyone a voice in selecting our candidates. Ranked-choice voting, and similar alternative voting methods, reduce the incentives for attacking opponents, as each candidate will need to get the second-choice vote from many people to win the election. We've already seen these reforms lead to better outcomes in Alaska. There, Senator Lisa Murkowski built a coalition of people across the political spectrum to retain her seat against an election-denying opponent. Those same rules helped elect Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola over former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who had much more extreme views and a much higher initial profile.

But, on top of these reforms, Americans need more choices. By setting up a system where there are only two options, each party needs only convince voters that they're better than the other team to win an election. Coupled with our skewed partisan primary system, this creates a race to the bottom—one that we're all suffering the consequences of now, as we head into a likely presidential rematch between two candidates that Americans don't want.

We need more choices. But we also need better choices.

When we started the Forward Party, we brought together former Republicans, Democrats, and independents. We didn't base our party on ideology or policies, but rather on shared values—accountability, respect for the rule of law, a focus on problem solving. Instead of structuring ourselves like the two major parties, we welcome dissenting voices that are willing to talk together to find shared ground and move this country forward.

We also planned to build from the ground up. That means no party platform adopted by a handful of people in a hotel room during a conference—our foundational documents prevent the national organization from doing that. Instead, we're empowering local communities and state leadership to drive on solutions that work in those communities based on our shared values. Values can apply across the country, but policies that work in San Francisco won't work in Nashville, and vice versa. The Forward Party creates space for respectful and honest dialogue, and innovation.

This focus on building from the ground up is also why we're not interested in running a presidential candidate in 2024. Instead, we're focused on running candidates at the state and local level—city council members, mayors, board of ed seats. There are over 500,000 elected offices in this country, and 70 percent of those races go uncontested. 5+ percent go unfilled. That's where our focus is. These seats are also the ones that have the most impact on people's day-to-day lives.

By delivering for people in these offices, we can show Americans that there are different, new, and better choices out there. We can show Americans a new way forward.

Andrew Yang is a businessman, lawyer, philanthropist, and former candidate for president of the United States. In July 2022, Yang, alongside Democrats, Republicans and Independents, launched the new Forward Party to give Americans more choice in our democracy.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.