If you want to see less partisanship in government, you are in good company—in his Farewell Address, George Washington pleaded with nation to avoid “the spirit of party” which “serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riots and insurrection.”

If anything, those words are more relevant today than they were in Washington’s time. It would be complicated to dismantle the two party system nationwide, but a significant step toward reducing the power of political parties would be for more states to adopt the so-called “top two” primary system.

In this type of primary, all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, are listed on the same ballot. The two who win the highest number of votes advance to the generat election—they may belong to different parties, to the same party, or to no party at all, which would favor candidates who can appeal accross the spectrum and who espouse policies that are acceptable to the majority of Americans.

Combine that type of primary with a ranked choice vote counting method (which looks at the votersʻ 2nd and 3rd choices if none of the candidates win a majority in the initial vote) and suddenly we have a an actual, functioning democracy on our hands.

Several states— California, WA, Nebraska, NY among them—have already adopted one of these reforms. As citizens we can unite and demand that the others do so as well.