Opinion: Before you vote read the party platforms

By Jim Ludlow, Executive Producer of the Good Government Show

Every election season, we are flooded with campaign ads, slogans, sound bites and more. Candidates at all levels work hard to appear independent-minded, insisting they will “fight for the people and not the party.” But once elected, most politicians vote almost exclusively along party lines at all levels of government.

This is a fact. At the national level, members of Congress vote with their party much of the time. The same trend also appears in state, county and local legislatures. Party loyalty is not the exception, it’s the rule. This isn’t a criticism, it’s a political reality. In a narrow sense, when we cast our ballot, we are not just choosing our neighbors to represent us. We are also selecting the political machine behind them, which has huge expectations, a firm agenda and very little tolerance for dissent.

The national parties are not loose coalitions of ideas, they are engines of uniformity. That’s why politicians vote in lock step with their party’s leadership. That’s why compromise has all but vanished. That’s why it feels like the people we elect all but disappear the day after they take their oath of office. To me, this contributes significantly to the fact that our support for politicians and government is low and not improving.

We can’t fix this by voting harder. We fix it by voting smarter. We must pay attention to more than personalities. We need to treat elections like hiring decisions and not popularity contests. That means investing time to know what versus only who we are really voting for. To me, that means reading the fine print or the candidate’s true resume. That means reading and understanding the party platforms.

When I first began reading the party platforms, I expected to find a few broad promises and a lot of vague language. What I found instead were well-defined blueprints. Documents that quietly dictate much of what our leaders say and do. Platforms outline positions on taxes, education, energy and cultural issues that rarely appear in campaign ads. They also reveal the issues a party chooses not to touch. This information becomes the lens through which I see each candidate.

History shows how decisive platforms can be. The very first Republican platform of 1860 drew a hard line against the expansion of slavery, which defined Lincoln’s presidency and America’s future. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal platform in 1932 reshaped the government’s role in the economy for generations. Platforms, like elections, have lasting consequences.

Today, voters have no excuse to ignore them. They are free, searchable and only a click away. I suggest starting with the table of contents. Skim the sections that matter to you, your family and to your community. Compare platforms side by side. Thirty minutes of reading will tell you far more about the future than any mailer or television ad.

If you don’t read the party platforms, you won’t know what your candidate is expected to support and what they are not. If you don’t follow how your representative votes, you won’t notice when they’ve stopped listening to you. With this information, you can essentially predict the future on how your candidate will act, vote and speak.

Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. Some legislators do break with their party when they believe it is in the best interest of their constituents. Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, for example, has built a reputation for supporting what he calls “common sense policies,” from banning members of Congress from trading stocks to reducing health care costs to backing measures that he believes reflect everyday concerns rather than party mandates. These too few moments of independence remind us that while party platforms are powerful, individual judgment still matters. Fetterman also said, “We are on different teams, but we aren’t enemies.” I wish his beliefs and actions were the norm in all levels of politics.

A more honest democracy starts with better-informed voters. Party platforms are long and a bit tedious. They are also written to satisfy factions rather than to inform voters. However, reading them is well worth the effort. They are readily available to all. The digital versions can be found at www.rnc.org and www.democrats.org.

Understanding what’s contained in the party platforms sheds light to help us better understand who and what we are voting for. More vigilance will make us better-informed voters.

The founders gave us self-government. Our democracy is messy and was not designed to be clean or easy. It was, however, intended to be watched and managed by informed citizens who take their voting duty seriously. It is our duty as voters and stewards of our precious, almost 250-year-old democracy to wield our ballots wisely.

This is a contributed opinion column. Jim Ludlow is executive producer of the Good Government Show Podcast and founder of the Good Government Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering ethical leadership and civic engagement. He lives in Fogelsville.