The Intrigue and Paradox of Team Competition
My fondest memories of my early years at sleepaway camp, when I was 10 and 11, revolve around the peculiar tradition of color war. Teams were formed randomly, with no connection to identity, experience, or prior allegiance. It was pure partisan competition. For an entire day, my bunkmates and even my brothers became my sworn opponents. Despite the temporary and arbitrary nature of these divisions, I took the competition incredibly seriously, participating in relay races, basketball games, and anything else on the jam-packed schedule.
At the end of the day, the entire camp would gather for two climactic showdowns. In the first competition, we had to shout self-congratulatory cheers. The team that impressed the judges with louder and more spirited cheers would claim victory. I would scream until I lost my voice. The finale was a tug-of-war, a less subjective contest. We lined up on either side of a massive rope stretched across the field and pulled with all our collective might. I can still picture the anchor of my team, a strong boy from the oldest age group, wrapping himself with the far end of the rope, his strained face turning red. And I remember the magical feeling when, after an endless and titanic effort, the rope slowly but surely began to move in our favor.
During both of these contests, my excitement and motivation to compete soared depending on the size of the team I was on. Ironically, the larger the team, the less significant my individual contribution became. This is one of the paradoxes of team competition.
These vivid memories of color war often resurface during election seasons. The parallel is striking: In mass democracies, voters deliberate, agonize, expend energy, and proclaim their allegiances, even knowing that their individual support is highly unlikely to determine the outcome. The larger the electorate, the less our votes matter. Yet we consistently turn out to vote when the electorate is largest, and we remember Election Days when our votes had the smallest practical impact.
Larry Schwartztol: Safeguarding Elections from Partisan Manipulation
In modern political life, voting individually, privately, and without external constraints is synonymous with democracy. It represents the power of ordinary people to determine their political circumstances and engage in self-governance. However, it often feels as though our individual choices and actions have little impact. The more democratic a society appears, with widespread suffrage and high voter turnout, the more voters may feel disenfranchised.
From a moral and political philosophy standpoint, the situation of an individual voter in a mass election is a collective action problem. Voters may feel a moral imperative to act as they wish others would, even if they don’t expect their individual actions to have any practical effect. This parallels boycotting unethical business practices, abstaining from benefiting from animal cruelty, or actively participating in recycling efforts, even when the impact is minimal.
Some voters may find reassurance or motivation in these philosophical considerations. Others may be motivated by the occasional example of one vote making a difference in a local election. However, most voters employ different strategies to amplify the influence of their individual ballots. They try to persuade others to vote or donate to organizations that mobilize and influence multiple voters. Individual donations have become expressions of voter preferences and mechanisms for participating in electoral politics for many Americans, not just the wealthy. Some voters strategically maximize their impact by registering in competitive districts or smaller states where their vote might carry slightly more weight. I have personally employed all of these strategies.
These efforts resemble shouting louder or pulling harder during color war – desperate attempts to be more than just a solitary voice or body in a massive crowd. But what stands out from my childhood experiences is not the concern about the size of my contribution, but the excitement and sense of belonging to such a large, competitive endeavor. For many voters, the feeling of participating in a massive partisan battle, fueled by a touch of magical thinking, is what makes them believe their votes count.
U.S. Party Politics: The Arena of Partisan Desire
U.S. party politics provides voters with this opportunity. Despite the negative connotation of partisanship in political discourse, partisan sentiments are as influential today as ever. Party-line voting has been on the rise, and large shifts in partisan votes within communities have become rare, leading to the notion of red and blue states or counties. Most U.S. voters gravitate towards one of the two major teams, even if they register as independent. The competition between these teams shapes and defines U.S. politics.
This development has a deep and complex history. Not all democracies have two-party systems, and the U.S. Constitution does not mandate parties. In fact, many of the Founding Fathers opposed the formation of parties. However, parties quickly formed as ideological differences emerged within George Washington’s cabinet. The modern two-party system with national competition and grassroots organization emerged in the early 1830s, initiated by Martin Van Buren and Andrew Jackson. Party labels became core forms of identity, connecting strangers to each other beyond a single election season. By 1847, partisanship had become the driving force in American electoral politics.
Van Buren justified his two-party system, claiming it was a revival of an existing ideological division. However, his primary concern was to prevent dividing the nation along geographical lines or allowing prejudices between free and slaveholding states to take hold. Building a Democratic Party dominated by defenders of slavery around the figure of Jackson, a slaveholding southerner with appeal beyond the South, Van Buren effectively forced Jackson’s opponents to organize against him nationally.
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