Imagine a cross-partisan alliance of citizen voters (Republicans, Democrats, Independents) who drop their red and blue identities for a minute, and instead of voting along party lines, each pledge to elect the most common-ground oriented (and least partisan) candidates, regardless of the ideology or party affiliation of either the candidate or the voter.
Bridge Pledge is a citizen movement to systematically reduce measurable political divisiveness by unifying cross-partisan voters to choose candidates based on their ability to govern as free agents and independently from their parties. As a swing bloc, even a modest sized citizen voting alliance can wield outsized power to elect the most pragmatic and collaborative problem solvers (“bridgers”), from any party, to better represent our common interests.
Bridge Pledge is a way for thoughtful citizens to align across parties to elect an all-star team of politicians. It is a citizen movement designed to put voters back in control and change the culture of our politics to become more collaborative and consensus solutions oriented for our common interests.
You can skim this part because you already knew that. But, the data is truly extraordinary.
Political bodies are more partisan than the voters they represent. The widening ideological gap within the US House of Representatives over the past 40 years is stunning. With it, cross-party political collaboration has been lost.
Our “u-shaped” legislative bodies are composed of two opposing camps of polarized politicians with widening views, each less willing to listen to the other side than the next.
The number of independents in America is massive, and growing. The April 2024 Gallup poll on political affiliation revealed that 45% of Americans consider themselves independent while just 27% and 25% call themselves straight up Republicans and Democrats respectively. Note the steady growth of the percentage of independent voters indicated by the gray dotted trendline over the past 20 years.
The actual number of independent voters is much bigger than what is reported, as most independent thinkers end up joining a party where they subsequently get counted. Such voters lack political representation.
To no one’s surprise, under-represented citizens are politically disengaged — they vote less frequently and make fewer campaign contributions than their peers. Worse still, such political detachment cedes even more political power to those active on the right and the left, further adding to our polarization.
Meanwhile, the public is fed up. Six in 10 American voters are dissatisfied with how well our democracy is working. Demand is growing for an alternative to the status quo. 85% of Americans want major changes or complete reforms to our political system.Alas, we feel stuck. 58% are “not confident the system can change.”Politics makes Americans feel exhausted and angry.
While everyone generally agrees with the diagnosis, there are few ideas on how we might fix it.
Voters are ready for a fresh idea.
There are two parts to Bridge Pledge.
1. Bridge Grade: An objective, transparent, and data-oriented method of sorting politicians that measures observable leadership behaviors including bi-partisan voting records, pragmatism, collaboration, and efforts that unites (not divides). Bridge Grade offers a letter grade (A, B, C, F) to identify “bridgers” from “dividers” based on observable behaviors including bill authoring, voting records, public statements, public appearances, funding sources, and ultimately their effectiveness in seeking pragmatic legislative solutions through demonstrating collaboration, consensus-orientation, and coalition-building.
2. Bridge Pledge: A cross-partisan citizen voting alliance who, as “pledgers,” are united in our commitment to always vote for the highest graded bridgers, regardless of the party of the candidate or the voter. As a swing bloc, we are aligned to elect the most collaborative and consensus-building leaders to represent our eclectic society.Bridge Pledge’s mission is to systematically reduce measurable political divisiveness by rewarding and electing politicians who prioritize consensus solutions based on common ground over party affiliations.
American politics is essentially a sports rivalry where voters choose candidates based solely on the color of their team.
The tribal split in our representatives is the result of us voters rewarding candidates solely for the color of their flair instead of the content of their character. Because of partisan voting, we end up electing red team and blue team zealots as “referees” who can’t even agree on the rules of the game.
Instead, we must treat elections as a way to choose higher quality referees — representatives who shape and enforce the rules and ensure fair play. In other words, governance.
What if, instead of voting for candidates based on their party affiliation and ideological beliefs, we chose representatives based on their abilities to collaborate and solve problems for our common interests? America is an extremely eclectic population comprised of so many intersecting groups. Governing this motley crew requires collaboration, nuanced understanding, and ultimately an ability to make mutually acceptable trade-offs. We need to elect people who want to make such trade-offs and can build consensus through coalitions.
The narrower the balance of power, the more power swing voters have.
Exhibit A: Remember when Senator Joe Manchin (WV) single-handedly hijacked the entire Senate agenda in 2021? His power came from his willingness to break his party affiliation and advocate for his constituents thereby leveraging his swing vote.
Exhibit B: Due to the electoral college Presidential voting process, only a small number of states matter in the outcome. AdImpact forecasts that in 2024 a total of $2.1B USD will be invested into political advertising with swing states Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, and Wisconsin projected to collect 76% of these budgets.
Swing voters are extremely valuable because of the power they claim in any narrow election. As citizens, we can also claim such power in the form of a unified swing voting bloc. As pragmatic Democrats and Republicans who join independents, we can demote our party affiliations and form a small but powerful cross-partisan swing voting alliance. Unable to be swayed by money, advertising, or ideology, we gain influence through our shared commitment to vote for candidates who are “bridgers”, regardless of their (or our) party affiliations.
In other words, instead of looking for Ds or Rs on the ballot, we vote for Bs. Because B stands for Bridger. Instead of a red versus blue world, we choose purple.
Think about this. As a politician, being partisan means voting with one’s party, regardless of common sense. Being a “bridger” means voting for common sense, regardless of one’s party.
Behaviors like partisan (or bipartisan) voting records, using uniting (or divisive) language, collaborating on legislation, and seeking common-ground are observable and measurable. This observable data on behaviors is fundamental to Bridge Pledge. Publicly available data can be used to grade candidates on their bridging behaviors. Bridge Pledge uses a open-source, data-oriented, and objective methodology to provide each politician with a trustworthy and transparent Bridge Grade.
Think of the Bridge Grade like the “Sanitary Inspection Grade” used by municipal health departments to measure and showcase restaurant hygiene standards on behalf of prospective diners. Like sanitation grades, Bridge Grades are blunt (A, B, C, F) and simple to understand.
If you eat at a restaurant with a C sanitation grade and get sick, well that’s on you. Same goes for voting. Similarly, when we vote in politicians with terrible Bridge Grades (C or F), and they don’t get anything done, well that’s on us.
The Bridge Grade blends objective data sources (publicly available) and uses a transparent calculation (anyone can see how it works) to produce the letter grade for each candidate.
Bridge Grade utilizes an existing, neutral, and observable non-partisan scorecard as the foundation of the Bridge Grade — augmented with multiple additional publicly available data sources over time.
Our first generation Bridge Grade for the current US House of Representatives is calculated as follows:
1. The Common Ground Committee is a non-partisan non-profit org that calculates a Common Ground Scorecard for every politician. They calculate a score (-20 to 100) that “measures the extent to which an elected official or candidate displays the qualities of a common grounder” across five categories. Rewards common ground seeking behaviors.
2. Bridge Pledge gives 20 additional bonus points for all Congressional members of the cross-partisan Problem Solvers Caucus (40 members split equally across both parties). Rewards action.
3. An additional multiplier of up to 20% based on how partisan their voting district is (as measured by Cook Political Report). This rewards common ground seeking behaviors of representatives who have been elected in highly partisan districts where they could so easily just vote along partisan lines. Rewards bravery.
This is just the start. Over time, we will add more independent data sources to increase reliability and remove subjectivity. More signal, less noise.
Browse the full list of Congressional Bridge Grades.
Using the numerical calculations above, utilizing statistical (objective) grade boundaries to remove grading subjectivity, we can identify bridgers from dividers.
Citizens who join Bridge Pledge agree to vote as follows:
Grade A. Always vote for an A. If there are multiple Grade A candidates, choose your favorite.
Grade B. If there’s not an A in the running, choose your favorite B.
Grade C. Never vote for a C over an A or a B. And, never re-elect a C. They’ve had their shot.
Grade F. Hard no.
Based on our first generation Bridge Grade, we can see the distribution of the 435 grades across both parties for the elected 118th Congress:
You can see that the distribution is pretty close across both parties. Though still crude, we believe v1 of the Bridge Grade is already effective in objectively identifying bridgers from dividers.
No. Bridgers should NOT be mistaken for moderates or centrists. They can be, but bridgers span a full range of ideological views.
VoteView.com, a non-partisan initiative to measure the ideology of politicians by analyzing actual voting records, provides an ideology score (measuring left to right) for all politicians. When you plot ideology scores on the horizontal-axis, and the Bridge scores on the vertical-axis, an interesting picture emerges.
One can see that while there is a correlation between extreme ideology and being a divider, there are also many examples in the Grade A group whose ideologies differ quite significantly (see the wide range left-to-right of the dark purple dots).
What is particularly striking in this chart is the clear lack of representation in the middle. The objective of Bridge Pledge is not specifically to choose candidates because they are centrist. No, Bridge Pledge is deliberately NOT about ideology. But by electing bridgers, we will narrow the partisan gap by populating the chart with dots at the top of the chart where ideological overlap and bridging possibilities are more fertile.
Let’s look at the 435 member United States House of Representatives election data itself from 2022.
The vast majority of the 435 elections were not close races. Five out of every six races (359) were won by 10% margins or more. Two thirds of races (287) were won by 20% margins or more. These election wipeouts are generally the effect of partisan gerrymandering where district lines are drawn to ensure single party dominance. The Bridge Pledge voting alliance will be of little to no help in these districts.
Cook Political Report measures the partisan lean (PVI) of every district compared to the national average. The number of swing districts has shrunk due to both redistricting and population trends of more homogeneous geographic clustering (like minded people gravitate to each other). But 82 of the districts have PVI scores of under 5.0 (less than 5% partisan bias in either direction) which makes these mixed partisan districts “in play” for crossover winners.
Objectively, we believe one can consider both districts with a PVI score under 5.00, and districts with elections that were decided by less than 5% voting margins (regardless of their PVI) to be swingable and “in play” for Bridge Pledge. There were 89 such districts in the 2022 elections — representing 20% of all congressional districts.
Of these 89 such districts, nearly half of today’s representatives are occupied by dividers (Cs and Fs), equally split between Democrats and Republicans.
As Pledgers, we identify these 42 dividers in the “in play” districts as the lowest hanging fruit for how to strengthen our political bridge.
Here is the list of the 42 dividers (ranked by lowest Bridge Score) in districts considered “in-play” from the 2022 elections.
Are voters (Democrat, Republicans, and Independents) willing to join the Bridge Pledge and commit to voting together as Pledgers?You tell me. Will you join?We think people everywhere are frustrated with the most dogmatic and divisive segments of each party. Pew Research reported on a July 2023 survey which shows all-time highs with 28% having unfavorable views of both parties (up 4x in 30 years).
The actual willingness to join (and vote accordingly), will depend on:
1. The ability of voters to put aside their own dogma, and commit to joining forces in the pledge, and
2. The enthusiasm of those with capital to invest adequate resources to fund an organization and subsequent mass communications to educate, inspire, and ultimately recruit a large enough swing bloc to impact election results.
Considering the election analysis above, our thesis is that impact can be felt with just a sliver of the 150m voting population. The bigger the bloc, the more impact we will have. One million Pledgers can influence. Five million Pledgers will wield real power.
Pledgers in some geographies are, understandably, worth more than others in terms of relative swinging power (see section about electoral college spending in swing states). Still, Bridge Pledge will thrive as a national narrative and movement and membership focus must never be isolated to fringe swing districts only. Further, thought leaders from all political ideologies (left, right, center) must endorse Bridge Pledge, as a true cross partisan alliance is mandatory to manufacture our collective power. We must build this together.
Politically active and single-issue voters and those whose identities are emotionally connected to their party or ideology won’t embrace Bridge Pledge. That’s okay. Bridge Pledge is not for everyone. Frankly, it will even be a test even for those who join, as pledgers will necessarily have to vote across party lines. There will be massive tests of conviction. Democratic pledgers must vote for candidates who don’t share their ideology on abortion or gun-control. Republican pledgers must vote for candidates who are more progressive in their views on social services, environmental regulation, taxes, and subsidized health care. This voting crossover is fundamental to the promise. And as voters we must remain aligned.
The payoff potential is huge.
It will be worth it. We can change the incentive systems for our representatives away from today’s zero-sum game to one of win-win compromises with solutions that people want, while allowing for trade-offs that are based in common interests.The best part is that as everyday citizens we can now reclaim some lost control. First we tip a handful of elections. Next, the bridgers we elect will collaborate incrementally. Cross-partisanship gets rewarded, and others begin to join in. More Pledgers beget more bridgers. A virtuous cycle ensues.It starts with a pledge. Your pledge.
Will you join Bridge Pledge?