Connor: Some military veterans see duty in electoral reform – Daily Independent

Todd Connor

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By Todd Conner | Co-Founder, Veterans for All Voters

Members of the US military swear an oath to country and the Constitution – not to a party or politician. It is countercultural for veterans to be partisan actors, which is why nearly 50% of us are conscientiously registered as independent voters, a number that is growing among young veterans.

Consider then the injustice and moral outrage that those who have done the most challenging things in the service of this country are also among the most marginalized in our political system, in many states disenfranchised in taxpayer-funded primaries. because they refuse to pick a side.

On Election Day, citizens in six states and the District of Columbia are considering ballot measures to return power to all voters, creating open primary systems. Military veterans who share a passion for the urgent need to restore our political system to some version of sanity are at the forefront of these initiatives.

This is a total watershed moment for electoral reform – and the potential tsunami is one of the least-told stories of this election cycle.

Veterans’ oath of service to the Constitution does not expire when they take off their military uniform. Today we know that the most significant threat to guard against is not an overseas bad actor, but internal divisions. And what is the basis? The political systems we operate under.

There is an optimistic story of citizens rising up to reclaim elections from the political-industrial complex, returning voice and agency to disenfranchised and disenfranchised voters. In 2024, 23.5 million voters were disenrolled in the primary. Many have had enough.

In a record-breaking year for reform, citizen-led open primary initiatives overcame well-funded opposition trying to keep them off the ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, South Dakota and Washington, DC. If successful, these measures would have profound implications for who runs for office, who wins and, most importantly, how it is conducted and governed.

Under this broken system, we are crippled without a reasonable minority that can stop the worst and most partisan efforts from moving forward and offer reasonable and bipartisan solutions to issues that most Americans can find common ground on, but our leaders do not they can. We take this threat as seriously as we would a time like 9/11 or an attack by an adversary. We see our mission as helping this country find a way forward that is consistent with our patriotic mission.

Veterans generally have no interest in engaging in guerrilla warfare. System-level solutions are what appeals to most of us, who fundamentally don’t do this work because we want a particular team or country to win, but because we understand that the work of the federal government—the military, the health care system, and more—benefits from a strong a competition of ideas, with a balance of different points of view entering the conversation.

Today, our system is hyper-polarized — and the establishment is desperate to keep it that way. The idea of ​​offering competitive elections every cycle is not that popular among politicians. Such a change would force elected officials to be much more attentive to the ideas, concerns, and will of the people they represent if they want to keep their jobs.

Today, there is little accountability under a system where most congressional races are decided in primaries. In fact, Unite America found that 87 percent of the House of Representatives this year was effectively elected by just 7 percent of voters in low-turnout party primaries.

Three years ago, fellow veteran Eric Bronner and I formed Veterans for All Voters, convinced that election reform was necessary for our country to move forward. Today, we have more than 500 volunteers in 48 states who believe there is a better way to give voters a place. We do not do this because we want the spoils of victory; representative democracy should be just that – different people win at different times.

Congress cannot do this for itself and political parties have no interest. Since each state has a different electoral system, the work has to be done there. This is the type of national reform we saw with marriage equality and cannabis: what initially seems impossible becomes inevitable.

The answer is not to throw more money at this beast of a system and hope for the best. It is to return power to the electorate. When such a reform works, we will never again need to feel faced with the most critical choices of our lives.

Editor’s note: Todd Conner is a Navy veteran and co-founder of the Veterans for All Voters. Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcome [email protected].