By Ben Manski

Can we achieve social change at the ballot box?

On Election Day, one month ago, 17,754 residents of Wisconsin's 77th Assembly District cast votes for their preferred candidate to represent them in the state legislature. Of these, significantly the largest portion, 7,749, voted for me and for the policies I advocated. It was a historic win for the Wisconsin Green Party. But despite that result, I will not be taking office in January, and the progressive tax and political reform agenda I campaigned on will not be represented in the State Capitol.

Why? Because in addition to the nearly 18,000 voters who indicated a preference in our State Assembly election, there were another 6,828 voters who simply connected the arrow next to "straight party" and then left the voting booth without selecting a specific candidate. No one knows who the "straight party" voters would have picked had they indicated a candidate preference. Some would have voted for Democrat Brett Hulsey. Some would have voted for me. Many, if not most, would have skipped the District 77 race altogether.

In most states, voters go to the polls, and individually mark the names of each if the candidates. If they skip a particular race, that is that. But in Wisconsin and other "straight party voting" states, voters are encouraged to mark the name of the party, and whoever that party has nominated gets their vote. Those straight party votes accounted for nearly half of the total given to Hulsey, and one third of the votes allotted to the third place candidate, Republican Dave Redick.

The result? On November 2nd, there were two wins. My campaign achieved success among voters who indicated a preferred candidate. But it was Hulsey who was elected to the legislature. The fact that those two wins are not the same victory is a product of one of the enduring problems of our political system, which is that it perpetuates and protects itself against demands for reform.

In the course of the campaign, we overcame every other obstacle regularly faced by independent candidates:

• We showed that the race was "winnable" by securing endorsements from three of Madison's four daily newspapers, three labor unions, the Secretary of State, the former state attorney general, two former mayors, two school board presidents, a village president, and two dozen other local elected officials.
• We raised and spent over $45,000, and attracted the active support of over two hundred volunteers.
• We even defeated political partisanship, with many committed Democrats deciding in the final weeks of the race to back me over their party's nominee, and with outgoing State Representative Spencer Black publicly criticizing my opponent for having "a problem with trustworthiness."

But we could not overcome election rules that reward what one commentator called "political tribalism" in the form of straight party voting.

The rules of elections vary from state to state. Other states have their own election problems. Yet across that variety, there remains a constant reality. The major political parties and the government have become so intertwined that our government protects the political parties and the political parties protect the government.

This arrangement is bad both for the government and the major parties, never mind the rest of us. It prevents decisive government action by keeping political debate within a range of safe alternatives. It hollows out and empties the major parties of their core principles by making them little more than elevators to power for the personally ambitious and politically cynical. It undermines voter choice by forcing us to engage in "strategic voting" rather than voting based on policy priorities. It denies the constitutional promise of a republican form of government by making corporate capture of our political system a simple matter of sponsoring the national party committees and their leaders.

Can we achieve social change at the ballot box? Over a century ago, progressives asked that same question. Their answer: Not without democratic reform. Wisconsin's Fighting Bob La Follette warned that, "Between the people and the representatives there has been built up a political machine which is master of both."

The political machine of La Follette's day was costly. It prevented the adoption of much needed health, welfare, labor, and financial reforms, which were only won after the rise of an aggressive progressive movement and a series of independent progressive, socialist, and populist political parties.

The partisan machinery of our day is costly too. Who will advocate in Wisconsin's Assembly for higher taxes on the wealthy and on major corporations? Who will work to close prisons? To fully fund public education? To ban corporate electioneering and lobbying? Those are the major reforms 7,749 Madison, Middleton, and Shorewood Hills residents voted for.

Those voters succeeded in building a post-partisan electoral coalition of Democrats, independents, and Greens. But they were thwarted by the partisan bias of Wisconsin's election rules. We must not allow that bias to block social change. We should strengthen efforts to unite progressives regardless of political party affiliation. And we need to advocate that all elections and government operations become non-partisan. Democracy requires the separation of party and state.

Ben Manski ran for Wisconsin State Representative on the Green Party in 2010. This article originally appeared in The Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin. If you'd like to help Manski retire his campaign debt, please visit https://votemanski.com/contribute