Party politics defies representation

I am not represented in my government. My voice is silenced by a few men at the pinnacle of political parties in representative assemblies at the state or national level. They exercise their power by controlling electioneering money, primary threats, or initiatives of my elected representative. They maintain power by gerrymandering, controlled political contributions and requiring lockstep voting in their respective chambers. I am not represented because party comes first.

At the national level, this pseudo democracy controlled by party politics stops any action on gun control, immigration policy, health care, meeting infrastructure needs and unfettered actions by a rogue president and many other pieces of needed legislation.

The same is true at my state level, where control is the hands of the other party. The result is the same, with legislation and spending is only accomplished through the approval of one individual elected by a small constituency of under 100,000 voters in a state of 13 million.

This failure to truly discuss and debate spending and policy leads to poor to bad results and built in inequality. Open discussion and committee hearings lead to consideration of fact and experience-based legislation that works for all residents should be expected from our represented assemblies.

Party-based philosophies can be invoked in the writing process, but the output should be based on reason and a truly independent and public vote of our representatives, not in a caucus vote behind closed doors and ratified in dictated party line votes in the assemblies.

The current process is not representative in any sense. The solution is allowing the assemblies member to freely vote representing their constituents without fear of retaliation by an overly powerful or moneyed party.

Joe Sunderhaus

Glen Ellyn