Want to change SC politics for the better? Vote incumbents out, Columbia resident urges
Fellow South Carolinians, politics is the allocation of resources and our state political leaders have once again doomed us to a decade of poor social, economic, and political development.
The 2020 Census provided the State Legislature with the opportunity to create competitive political districts at the local, state and national level, but instead they choose to retrench the status quo by gerrymandering the districts.
Both the Republican and Democratic parties are complicit in this process. The lack of competitive districts shields both political parties, results in poor laws and policies. Poor politics and weak political leadership lead to an unnecessary poor quality of life here in South Carolina.
Since 2017, US News & World Report has quantified and cataloged South Carolina’s dismal state of affairs in it’s annual Best States Rankings. Using eight main categories (healthcare, education, economy, opportunity, infrastructure, crime and corrections, fiscal stability, quality of life), 20 subcategories, and 70 different metrics the magazine ranks South Carolina 42 out of 50 states in 2021 with no change since 2019.
The current ranking is an improvement since South Carolina’s initial ranking of 45 out of 50 in 2017. However, as you can see South Carolina has stagnated. The only reason for this stagnation is poor political competitiveness, poor political leadership at all levels, and a lack of political will among our politicians to do the right thing.
In October 2021, as the State Legislature started to look at the redistricting issue, the concept of an independent commission to redraw the districts wasn’t seriously considered.
As The State’s reporter, Zak Koeske, found out when interviewing Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey about the independent commission. While Senator Massey understood the appeal of an independent commission, he lacked the moral and political courage to push for such a process. He admitted he did not want to change the system.
“As a concept, it’s appealing,” Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, said. “But almost every time you look at these things, this independent commission is shaded toward the individual or entity that wants to have a new way of doing it.”
No kidding, we need “a new way of doing it.” Noncompetitive politics hinders social, economic and political development in South Carolina.
“He said he thinks about South Carolina’s redistricting process the same way Winston Churchill thought of democracy. ‘This may not be the best way to do this,’ Massey said. ‘But it’s the best way we’ve come up with.”
No Senator Massey there are better ways, but you, South Carolina GOP Chair Drew McKissick and South Carolina Democratic Chair Trav Robertson like things just the way they are, and will not change anything even if it will benefit the citizens of South Carolina. It’s attitudes and matching policies like this that keeps South Carolina needlessly mired in the bottom 10 of states rankings.
The question now is, what do we do about it?
We, the fair-minded citizens of South Carolina, have to change the election laws. We have to wrest the power away from the political parties. Right now, the political parties decide who gets elected in South Carolina, not the individual.
As an example, the South Carolina GOP didn’t even hold a presidential primary in 2020 allowing Donald Trump to get on the ballot unopposed. Never fear, the Democrats did the same thing when Barack Obama was running for his second term.
Furthermore, because the parties control the elections, we aren’t even allowed to write-in who we want for President; we have no choice but who the parties want us to vote for. We are forced to declare party allegiance if we want to vote in the primaries.
We can’t be independent voters in South Carolina and vote in primaries. The parties pick who gets to allocate our resources, and for the two dominant parties it is a zero-sum game, no compromise allowed, people be damned.
The parties have usurped the power of the people to the detriment of South Carolina.
The only way to change the rules is to vote for change. While there is still a chance, this November send a message to end the status quo by voting all incumbents out of office. It doesn’t make any difference what party they belong to, or how much you like them; all incumbents at all levels must go.
This tells the newly-elected representatives that we, the people, want change.
We want non-partisan primaries, ranked-choice voting, ability to conduct recall votes and other policies that incentivize candidates to appeal to as broad a group as possible (including people who are not in their party) and doing what’s in the best interest of people and not the base of the party.
These changes and other electoral reforms like it would divest power from the parties and make our politicians more accountable. This puts people over party and provides a better standard of living for all South Carolinians.
“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
- President George Washington, Farewell Address Saturday, Sept. 17, 1796
President Washington called it 225 years ago. Now we, the people, must register to vote and vote the incumbents out of office, demand election reform and return power to the people.
Retired Army Col. Christopher P. Himsl is a resident of Columbia, South Carolina and describes himself as an Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Colin Powell Republican.