Over the last two months, elected officials in Texas and California, the country’s two most populous states, have engaged in brazen gerrymandering to redraw congressional districts and advance their respective national parties at the expense of genuine local representation. Rather than seriously debating policy around our great challenges—like immigration or rising health care and housing costs—our leaders are devising clever ways to rig the system.
They are doing so against a backdrop of voter dissatisfaction with our political process. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are hovering at their lowest approval ratings in years and political alienation is reaching new heights, giving independents a chance to significantly shape future electoral dynamics. It’s time we stop viewing political independents as potential “spoilers” and get serious about electing officials who truly represent American interests.
More than 80 percent of Americans believe that elected officials don’t care what people like them think. So why do we keep electing members of unpopular parties? Much of the issue is reputational. For too long, independent candidates have been seen as “spoilers”: never a chance of winning an election, but able to take meaningful votes away from the two-party system. Americans who vote for independent or third-party candidates are told they’re “throwing away their vote,” even as they are being encouraged to vote for a candidate whose platform doesn’t represent them.
In the 2000 election, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader faced intense scrutiny from Democrats and accusations that he tipped the election to George W. Bush. He earned more than 97,000 votes in Florida, a state that Bush famously won by a mere 537 votes. The Washington Post was still rehashing this debate 15 years later, in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
Politicians from both major parties have reinforced the notion that independent votes are a “waste,” since it keeps citizens locked into a system designed to serve the parties themselves and not the people. This fear-driven message conditions voters to believe they have no real choice beyond the Democratic or Republican parties. It also discourages voter turnout: In 2024, 90 million Americans—about 36 percent of eligible voters —did not vote at all. That’s the real waste.
Beyond that stigma, independent candidates face systemic obstacles that make breaking through the duopoly even harder. In many states, independent candidates must gather thousands of signatures to qualify for the ballot. Debates routinely exclude independent voices, and mainstream media coverage overwhelmingly favors Democrats and Republicans. These structural barriers reinforce the myth of the “wasted vote” and suppress competition, ensuring the two-party system continues to dominate not because of merit, but because the odds are stacked in its favor.
The spoiler designation is reserved for candidates or groups that have no viable path to victory. But this isn’t true for today’s independents. They can win. Two decades ago, less than a third of Americans identified as independents. Today, it’s 43 percent. Moreover, a Gallup poll found that 58 percent of U.S. voters agree that a third major party is needed because the Republican and Democratic parties “do such a poor job” of representing the American people.
Many are quick to label political independents as the “mushy middle,” lacking firm commitments or united positions. In reality, however, research from the Independent Center, where I work, shows that independents are actually the most cohesive political movement, compared to Democrats and Republicans, sharing more common ground than they realize. Within both traditional parties, younger voters have sharp disagreements with older members of their own ranks. Independent voters, by contrast, tend to be aligned on policy priorities even across different generations.
Large majorities of independents agree on fixing our immigration system, modernizing Social Security, increasing government accountability, and tackling our nation’s debt and deficit. They’re also in favor of modernizing our entitlement system, fixing our broken immigration process, and solving the skyrocketing cost-of-living crisis. Stripped of party labels, surveys show broad consensus on practical solutions.
Additionally, independents support improving the processes that make our democracy and political institutions strong, regardless of who is in power. Reforms like ranked-choice voting, open primaries, and nonpartisan redistricting, for instance, have the power to make elections fairer, but they face the same constraints of the two-party system unless Americans couple them with a broader movement for accountability and representation.
To fundamentally change the system requires more than placing a vote in the next election cycle or tinkering at the margins: iIt takes a movement. The most important transformations in American history—abolition, civil rights, women’s suffrage—began with well-organized movements that refused to accept the status quo and turned widespread frustration into lasting reform. A new movement that follows in these footsteps and challenges the dominance of an unresponsive establishment is possible. The political duopoly is slipping, making now the right moment for a coalition of disaffected Americans to push for real change.
Voters deserve representatives who represent them and a movement that moves them. Demanding real change requires more than voting. It calls for increasing civic engagement, having difficult conversations, uniting with fellow independents, and rewarding politicians who are willing to be vocal about the value of democratic renewal. Only a movement can inspire the resolve to demand more than symbolic change and the collective action needed to break systemic barriers.
The only thing the independent movement will spoil is the dominance of the dysfunctional two-party stranglehold. To suggest that adding competition and choices for voters is negative is to double down on the partisan rhetoric that’s created an unaccountable system in the first place. While both sides of the political spectrum attempt to rig districts through gerrymandering, independents offer a way to restore genuine representation and put power back in the hands of voters.
If Americans recognize the power that a representative democracy truly affords them, we can put the “spoiler” myth to rest and build the next great reform movement. Democracy is not a spectator sport where voters’ role is to keep the “wrong” team out of power. It can be a living, breathing expression of the people’s will—flexible enough to evolve, adapt, and genuinely represent us.
