Just last week, citizens of the Keystone State scattered to local polling stations around the area for the Pennsylvania primaries. Individuals were asked to cast a ballot for their politician of choice, in their identified party. That means, that anyone registered as Democrat could not vote for a Republican nominee, and anyone registered as Republican could therefore not vote for a Democrat nominee during the primary election. The issue with this phenomenon is that as voters, citizens of a free country, should not be limited as to who they can vote for in any election solely based on party. Instead, individual votes should be cast as to who aligns with whose beliefs, in order to ensure maximum voting outcome. Political parties dishonor the idea of an American citizen’s right to vote through limiting an individual’s choices during primary elections and therefore should be abolished.

Some people say that the issue with this idea, is that political parties actually encourage political participation due to opposing viewpoints and that getting rid of them would lower voter turnout. However, this does quite the opposite. In fact, Republicans and Democrats who have more moderate views tend to get more votes than intense conservatives or liberals. By completely ridding the system of the “I side with this,” or “I side with that” statements, these labels can be removed in their entirety to actually maximize registered voter turnout.

As the viewpoints on various political hot topics begin to merge and the lines begin to blur, more and more citizens are found to be registered as Independent anyway, instead of simply Democrat or Republican. Statistically, around 43% of the US population is now registered as Independent, an all time high for this country. Society is constantly changing and adapting, and politics need to catch up. People are beginning to realize that there are many viewpoints to a certain issue or situation, and by staunchly holding on to one viewpoint while ignorantly ignoring the other, it does not provide effective results. A better method would be to remove parties completely from the equation in order to benefit both voters, the voting community, and the presidential candidates

In John F. Kennedy’s words, “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.” The millennial generation should indeed, as the up-and-coming generation, work to make our nation once again great. By ridding the system of political parties, this concept can be executed and carried out for the benefit of not only America as it is now, but for future generations to come.