by Mark Schwendau
The political action group RepresentUs held a town hall-type meeting where CEO Joshua Graham Lynn and actor Ed Helms talked about what they see as wrong with America today. It did not get the attention and acclaim it deserved, as we will offer here.
“RepresentUs is America’s leading nonpartisan anti-corruption organization fighting to fix our broken and ineffective government. We unite people across the political spectrum to pass laws that hold corrupt politicians accountable, defeat special interests, and force the government to meet the needs of the American people.”
Ed Helms is the very charismatic actor who played Andy Bernard in the NBC sitcom “The Office.”
The Nantucket Project (TNP) takes place in Nantucket, Massachusetts, dating back to 2010. The event is held in a tent at the White Elephant Hotel overlooking Nantucket Harbor. The Nantucket Project was founded by Tom Scott and Kate Brosnan. TNP brings “cutting-edge filmmakers to the island to create short films inspired by presentations at the event.”
Thus, the key finding of the study they highlighted dates back to a previous study in 2014:
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact on public policy.” – Gilens & Page
The two-part duopoly system of Democrats and Republicans, they say, while operating “legally,” is still terribly corrupt. They then go on to show a very funny-looking alphabet made of a font from gerrymandered political districts around the US.
My home state of Illinois showed the 11th District forming an “N” when this graphic was created in 2019, but that district has since been changed to form more of a “C.” What was most interesting about the colorized version (red and blue) introduced by RepresentUs is the problem seems to show Democrats and Republicans equally guilty of gerrymandering districts for political advantage.
Ed Helms correctly points out, “That means we know who’s going to win the election before the election even happens. And that means the election is meaningless! It is just a ritual, a quaint nod to the past. It has no value or meaning in our process. And there is a really crazy side effect to all of this.”
RepresentUS claims to have had many victories in areas such as Alaska where they put controls on lobbying gifts and worked on ethics reform and transparency, all good things. But they also push for non-partisan primaries and ranked-choice voting, not such good things.
While some of the thoughts and observations in the presentation by Lynn and Helms are very thought-provoking and highlight real problems of American-style politics, very often, their talking points and positions do not come off as bipartisan as they claim to be. They come off as favoring the Democrats.
At one point, Helms brought up former President Donald Trump as one reason for America’s divisiveness when he asked and answered, “Is it because we have a past president who will not accept a legitimate election and is trashing norms left and right? Yeah, that too.”
If Helms wanted to be fair, he could have offered this sentence after his previous one, asking, “Is it because we have a current president who has a history of compulsive lying with uninvestigated RICO act violations against him and his family? Yeah, that as well.”
Another example of Lynn and Helms being off target is when the duo highlighted Alaska as the way our nation should lead the country on “Ranked Choice Voting” former President Trump had a lot to say about that last summer after Alaska went down that road.
“You never know who won in ranked choice. You could be in third place, and they announce that you won the election,” Trump said, “It’s a total rigged deal. Just like a lot of other things in this country.”
The two takeaways I took from this presentation were relative to how our elected Federal officials no longer represent the will of we the people and the wickedness of gerrymandering districts of the US. I applaud RepresentUs for their work at rooting out political corruption in this country, but their task is truly unfulfilled if they do not address the voting abnormalities of the 2020 General Election as well as the 2022 Midterm Election of Arizona where Katie Hobbs probably stole an election from Kari Lake.
As former President Trump has said, this double standard in justice could lead to “violence.” The left took that as a threat. They should have taken it as a sincere concern for the well-being of the country by the last legitimately elected president America has had.
Contrary to what Lynn and Helms offer, I think the root cause of the dysfunction in America today is the two-tier justice system, as well as election ballots, cast lacking chain-of-custody… and I bet I am a little closer to the truth than they are.
Copyright © 2023 by Mark S. Schwendau
Mark S. Schwendau is a retired technology professor who has always had a sideline in news-editorial writing where his byline has been, “Bringing little known news to people who simply want to know the truth.” He classifies himself as a Christian conservative who God cast to be a realist. His personal website is www.IDrawIWrite.Tech.