The two-party system is impacting the country negatively and should be replaced by a more efficient and effective system. It is slowly tearing the country apart, and it does not benefit everyone.   

In political science, and even sometimes in history courses, we must read The Federalist Papers for an assignment or essay. Some people believe that it is old history and it is not applicable to today’s modern government, and for a while, I believed that as well. But slowly I learned it is not true.   

A few of the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison created The Federalist Papers to encourage some U.S. states to ratify the current constitution. In the essays the men discussed challenges that we may face and it described the original intentions of the government.   

One of the issues discussed in The Federalist Papers was factions.   

A faction is “a party or group (as within a government) that is often contentious or self-seeking,” according to the Merriam Webster website.   

In today’s current government, we face a problem with factions, but we refer to them as political parties.  

In Federalist Paper #10, James Madison stated that factions are inevitable and would be an issue if they became too tyrannical, according to the Bill of Rights Institute.   

Another important point Madison brought up in the Federalist Papers is that there are ways to make sure factions do not form and become too powerful. One way is to remove the liberties from the citizens, but that is unconstitutional. The other way to limit the power of factions is by creating many factions.   

The problem we are facing is we only have two major political parties, thus causing one to always be the majority and the other the minority.  

This would not be an issue if both of the parties were able to sit down and negotiate and favor the minority parties’ rights. Unfortunately, recent events have proved this is nearly impossible.   

Others may believe that negotiating minority rights is not an issue, but if it were not an issue, minorities would not have been protesting for months for justice, and the first presidential debate would have gone by a lot smoother.   

Since the two-party system only favors the majority party, it should be dismantled.   

On top of posing a threat to the minority party, one other reason why the two-party system should be dismantled is that it may cause the rise of uneducated voters.   

Many individuals who grew up in a strong Democrat or Republican household possibly will not educate themselves on what policies each party supports and they will probably vote the way they have been told is right. 

Since everyone is so accustomed to either voting red or blue, they lack knowledge in the propositions, policies, and even the candidate’s personality.    

If the government were to acknowledge other political parties, there would be a wider variety of candidates, maybe even better options, and it would force voters to become more educated on who they are voting for.   

Another reason why the acknowledgement of other political parties would be beneficial is because the majority would not have so much power over the minority. 

Because there are only two political parties, people are voting on their party name instead of the policies that they present, and it is hurting people within our society.