The Slpit Ticket

When I was young, my father used to say he voted for the opposite party every election cycle—just to keep them honest.

At the time, I thought it was a throwaway line. It wasn’t. It was a philosophy.

A lot of people used to believe democracy worked best when power was never comfortable. The thinking was simple: if you knew you could lose your job, you paid closer attention. No party deserved permanent control, and no politician should ever feel safe. Voting wasn’t about loyalty—it was about leverage.

That mindset created something we hardly see anymore: voters who intentionally split power. President from one party, Congress from the other. Not because they were confused, but because they were deliberate. They trusted institutions more than parties, restraint more than ideology, and accountability more than emotion.

Back then, politics wasn’t an identity. It was a tool.

What changed wasn’t intelligence—it was psychology. Voting slowly shifted from regulating power to defending a tribe. Once that happened, the idea of “keeping them honest” faded away. You don’t discipline your own team; you protect it.

There are still people who think the way my father did—mostly independents and those who remember a quieter political era—but they’re fewer now and drowned out by constant noise.

Looking back, he wasn’t being cynical. He was being practical. And the system worked better when more voters believed no one should ever get too comfortable in power.