The 2026 write-in experiment
What happens when voters stop accepting the political choices the Duopoly makes for them?
27% DEMOCRAT | 27% REPUBLICAN | 45% INDEPENDENT
51% of Congress is not 51% of America
Robert Sayre
Independent Write-In Candidate
WA-06 Congressional District
America's representative government increasingly operates through a simple formula: win 51% of the seats and exercise 100% of the majority's institutional power. But this "majority" can be deeply misleading.
According to Gallup, just 27% of Americans identify as Democrats and 27% as Republicans, while a record 45% identify as Independents. Yet our political institutions remain overwhelmingly controlled by the two major parties.
The result is a peculiar form of representative government: a political party representing little more than one-quarter of Americans can capture a narrow congressional majority and acquire the institutional power to set the legislative agenda, control committees, determine what receives a vote, and advance legislation largely along party lines.
51% of Congress is not 51% of America.
This is the structural problem at the center of the 2026 Write-In Experiment.
The Republican and Democratic parties dominate a political system in which Americans are repeatedly presented with a binary choice: Republican or Democrat. Elections determine which party controls Congress, but rarely challenge the two-party system itself.
The 2026 Write-In Experiment asks a different question: What happens if voters simply refuse the choice they have been given?
A write-in candidacy is a small-scale experiment in whether voters who are dissatisfied with both parties are willing to exercise the political power they already possess. The objective is not to create another political party or replace one ideological majority with another. It is to demonstrate that neither party is entitled to a congressional majority.
Imagine a Congress in which neither Republicans nor Democrats controlled 218 seats. A relatively small number of genuinely Independent representatives could prevent either party from governing through a simple party-line majority and require competing coalitions to form around individual issues.
Republicans could still be Republicans. Democrats could still be Democrats. Independents could agree with either—or neither. But governing would require negotiation rather than simple party arithmetic.
One write-in candidacy in Washington's Sixth Congressional District will not transform Congress.
But it can test an idea:
Americans do not have to accept the political choices the Duopoly gives them.
Policy Discussions
Southern Border Security
America is strongest when it secures its borders while preserving a fair, orderly, and effective legal immigration system. A sovereign nation has both the right and the responsibility to control who enters its territory, and effective border enforcement is an essential component of national security and the rule of law. The current Southern border security measures have demonstrated that determined enforcement can produce meaningful results, contributing to an 89.2% reduction—approximately 1.97 million fewer people attempting to enter the United States illegally between official ports of entry compared to the FY2022 peak. Maintaining this level of border security protects American communities, preserves confidence in the nation's immigration laws, and ensures that immigration occurs through lawful and accountable processes rather than unlawful entry.
At the same time, America has long benefited from a legal immigration system that balances national sovereignty with openness to newcomers. By providing clear and efficient pathways to immigration, permanent residency, and citizenship, the United States attracts talented individuals, reunites families, strengthens the workforce, and promotes long-term economic growth while upholding the rule of law. Legal immigration has always been a structural strength of the American experiment, allowing the nation to grow while maintaining public confidence that its laws are respected. Secure borders and legal immigration are not competing priorities—they are complementary institutions. Together they protect national sovereignty, reinforce public trust, preserve America's identity as a nation of immigrants, and keep the United States strong, secure, and prosperous.
Protecting the Right to Privacy
A strong America depends on a government that protects both the nation's security and the personal liberty of its citizens. Privacy is a cornerstone of individual freedom and civil liberties, allowing Americans to make personal decisions without unnecessary government intrusion. While the Constitution does not explicitly use the word "privacy," the Supreme Court has long recognized constitutional protections for personal privacy through multiple provisions of the Bill of Rights and the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
For decades, landmark decisions such as Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Roe v. Wade (1973) shaped the legal understanding of these protections. Although Roe was overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), the broader constitutional debate over personal privacy, individual autonomy, and the appropriate role of government remains one of the defining issues of our time.
Protecting personal liberty should not be a partisan issue. Americans may disagree on specific policy outcomes, but they overwhelmingly expect their elected representatives to defend fundamental constitutional rights, respect individual dignity, and resist unnecessary government intrusion into the private lives of law-abiding citizens.
As political polarization intensifies, fundamental liberties are increasingly drawn into ideological battles that leave little room for thoughtful compromise. Lasting solutions require leaders with the independence to weigh constitutional principles, scientific evidence, and the will of the broader American public—not simply the demands of party leadership or ideological factions
Transforming Social Security
The Old Age Insurance Social Security has provided retirement security for generations of Americans, but the economy and workforce have changed dramatically since the program was created during the Great Depression. Rather than allowing recurring trust fund crises to threaten the retirement security that millions of workers have earned, Congress should modernize the system while preserving its core promise. In this policy proposal, I outline the American Guaranteed Retirement Insurance (AGRI) Act—a practical and fiscally responsible plan to replace the fossilized Social Security program. A new social contract amongst the people for a guaranteed national retirement insurance program with indefinite financial stability protecting the retirement benefits that American workers have earned through a lifetime of payroll contributions.
Military Pension Tax Relief
Retirement pensions are not ordinary wages. They are earned retirement benefits promised to the men and women who devoted decades of their working lives to serving the United States. Whether earned through military service, civil service, or other public employment, these pensions represent a contractual commitment that should be honored—not treated as a convenient source of additional tax revenue after a lifetime of public service.
As discussed in the Keep America Strong blog on federal finance, the federal government does not rely on taxes collected from retirement pensions to fund its spending. Rather than reducing the purchasing power of retirees through federal taxation, those resources should remain in the hands of the people who earned them. Retirees spend their income in local communities—supporting small businesses, creating jobs, and strengthening the broader economy. Allowing retirees to keep more of their pensions not only honors their years of service but also promotes economic growth by enabling millions of Americans to make their own decisions about how best to invest in their families, communities, and local economies.
Congressional Term & Age Limits
America's Founders most likely envisioned Congress to be a body of citizen legislature—not a permanent political class. Yet today's political system has metastasized into a dysfunctional duopoly, with the Republican and Democratic parties exercise near-exclusive control over Congress through the advantages of incumbency, fundraising networks, party machinery, and partisan redistricting. The result is a political monopoly that rewards party loyalty over independent judgment, discourages competition, and increasingly insulates elected officials from the Americans they represent.
To restore accountability and ensure regular renewal of leadership, elected representatives should be limited to a maximum of twenty (20) years of cumulative service, regardless of whether that service is in the House of Representatives, the Senate, or any combination of the two. Upon reaching twenty years of congressional service, an individual shall be permanently ineligible to serve in either chamber.
In addition, no individual shall be eligible for election to Congress if they will attain the age of seventy (70) during the term of office being sought. Public service demands exceptional physical stamina, cognitive ability, and the capacity to adapt to an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world. While many Americans remain highly capable beyond the age of seventy, the nation's highest legislative offices should be structured to promote generational renewal rather than indefinite tenure.
These reforms are not directed at any individual or political party. They are designed to dismantle the institutional incentives that have allowed the two-party duopoly to maintain an effective monopoly over our national political system. America benefits when new leaders, fresh ideas, and independent voices regularly enter public service. Congress should once again be a place where citizens serve their country for a season before returning to private life—not a career measured in decades.
Inflation
Americans deserve honesty from their elected leaders. Too often, the political duopoly suggests that electing one party over the other can somehow return grocery prices to pre-pandemic levels. That is not how a modern market economy works.
In a competitive economy, neither Congress nor the President can simply order farmers, food processors, distributors, or retailers to lower prices. Government can influence costs indirectly through fiscal, trade, energy, agricultural, and competition policy, but it cannot decree that a gallon of milk or loaf of bread should cost what it did five years ago.
Inflation is also cumulative. Once prices rise across the economy, they rarely return to previous levels. The objective of sound economic policy is therefore to slow future inflation while allowing wages, productivity, and economic growth to catch up with the higher price level.
History bears this out. Consumer prices have roughly doubled since the early 1990s, while retail food prices increased approximately 34 percent between 2013 and 2025 alone, much of it during and after the COVID-19 inflation surge. Those higher prices are now largely part of the economy's baseline.
For most working- and middle-class Americans, however, lasting affordability will depend on wage growth exceeding inflation, stronger productivity and competition, and sustained low and stable inflation. Americans should expect future incomes to catch up with today's prices—not today's prices to return to yesterday's levels.
These brief policy discussions are not another collection of campaign promises designed to win votes; they're examples of what issue-by-issue independent representation looks like. The principles and decision-making framework that genuine Independents like Robert Sayre would bring to Congress are rooted in pragmatism rather than partisanship, evidence rather than ideology, and long-term national interests rather than short-term political gain.
Every issue deserves to be evaluated on its own merits, guided by the Constitution, sound public policy, fiscal responsibility, and the preferences of the broad majority of Americans—not the demands of party leadership or ideological extremes.