A political ad that's not red versus blue.

This was a favorite of the staff Slack this week: amidst an incredibly divisive national political environment, our neighbors in Utah are showing us how it’s done. 

The Republican AND Democrat candidates for governor this week released a political ad TOGETHER. Instead of attacking one another or pitting Utahns against each other, Republican Spencer Cox and Democrat Chris Peterson are standing together to spread the message that it really is about putting country over party. These elections are about differences in policy, not patriotism.

In the ad, Peterson and Cox pledge to support Utahns decision in the election, whether they vote by mail or in person. It's such an important message for today's political environment. Watch the ad and allow the bipartisanship expressed to revive your tired political heart. We should all strive to be more like them. 

We’re going to count. every. vote.

Until every vote has been counted, I will not stop talking about how we must count every vote. Let me be clear: we must count every vote before declaring a winner of the election. This week, I’m joined in my call by National Council on Election Integrity members Jane Harman and Deb Pryce, who write for CNN about their own experiences with long counting periods. 

“Uncertainty about whether you've won or lost is never fun, but counting every vote cast in accordance with applicable laws is what we do in America. This year, we all need to be patient and give election officials time to do their jobs, even if that means there will be no balloon drops or fireworks to mark the results,” they write. 

Don’t listen to the campaigns. Don’t listen to the random Twitter accounts. Don’t let anyone tell you the election is over until the election is over, and the count is a mathematical certainty. Count every vote.

I take a lot of heat when I refer to our political system as a democracy. IT’S NOT A DEMOCRACY, I’m told. WE’RE A CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC. Whether you call it a democracy (which experts back me up on) or a Constitutional Republic (which yes, is the more precise term) we all agree on the essential element of these systems of government: the will of the people matters. Ensuring that our values and opinions are reflected in the government is important. 

Our government has been incapable of representing the will of the people for some time now, and there’s concern that the government may be so dysfunctional that it threatens the very fiber of our representative form of government. Facing the prospect of a Democrat landslide, we as Americans have to ask what the path to reform is: how do we create a more representative government? On the one hand, a Democratic majority could pursue a path of retribution and partisanship, abolishing the filibuster and packing the Supreme Court. Or, we could look at the next four years as an opportunity for regrowth. Reforms like ranked choice voting, independent redistricting commissions, and nonpartisan primaries could actually reduce partisanship and build a country that’s less divided, capable of focusing on policy outcomes rather than electoral ones. 

To quote from the article: “America cannot continue as red versus blue,” says Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “America needs a story that realizes we’re both locked in the same family together and we can only progress together.”