The Right to Nominate

About the Book

“Government of the parties, by the parties, and for the parties”—is this what the Framers of the Constitution designed? Is this the fate of the American Republic? Fewer than 5 percent of Americans today know that the party system is not in the Constitution. The Framers loathed political parties, and the sovereign position they designed for the American people—to rule over all parties and interest groups through our elected representatives—has been stripped from us. The Right to Nominate unveils this fundamental dysfunction that now permeates every aspect of American government. “We the people” have been so enfeebled by our loss of sovereignty that we are now helpless to stop politicians from shutting down our government or even bankrupting our country. Though the Constitution was purposely written to stop political parties from taking over government, today fewer than 1 percent of the people know where those antiparty clauses are. By exploiting one weakness in the framers’ magnificent design, the parties have stolen the American people’s sovereignty by quietly transforming the people’s representatives into party representatives. The Right to Nominate shows how they did it, and what the terrible consequences have been. The Right to Nominate presents a simple but revolutionary answer for the political rebirth of America—for breaking the chokehold of party control, for the return of the people’s sovereignty, and for the triumph of representative government. Two hundred years of electoral experience are distilled to reveal the missing cornerstone of representative government, the unredeemed right of the American people: the right to nominate. Amendment XXVIII, offered here, will establish a Constitutional mechanism for the people to nominate nonparty candidates, breaking the parties’ stranglehold over elections by opening up more rights and more freedom for Americans.

About the Author

Thomas Peterson was born in Texas in 1946, the third of five sons. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1968 (AB government) and attended Harvard Law School (1969–70). He is presently an associate member of the American Political Science Association and of the International Political Science Association. After his schooling, Mr. Peterson intended to pursue the life of a philosopher. But he felt the call to ministry and spent most of the next decades serving as a senior pastor, regional overseer, and international teacher. During his years of service and leadership in the church setting, Mr. Peterson’s political insights and awe for the republic the Founding Father’s originally designed remained constant as his motivation grew to see the fullness of its potential glory and justice benefit the American people. The Right to Nominate is the product of over a decade of research.