Our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, opens with a national commitment to individual equality and rights, implicitly recognizing and protecting the diversity of America. Enabled by the declaration, we bring to our communities, our state and our country an array of backgrounds, cultures, circumstances, ideas, faiths, moral intuitions, ideas, associations, objectives, needs, hopes and more – an array that is one of our greatest strengths.

Yet, this rich diversity is collapsing in the public square when faced with today’s hyperpartisan political duopoly, where winner-take-all politics thwarts any action and debases the idea of open discussion and multipartisanship. Instead of diversity, we now face extreme political polarization that infects governments, politics, public policy, media, friendships, education and health care. It even reaches down to family conversations around the dinner table.

According to the Independent Voter Project, about 40% of New Hampshire voters identify as “unaffiliated.” Yet when we enter the primary polls, our first task is to choose between a Democratic or Republican ballot. And how are these unaffiliated voters represented in one of the world’s largest democratic legislative bodies? Of New Hampshire’s 424 legislators, 421 are either Republican or Democrat. Only three are independents. Can New Hampshire remain the “Live Free or Die” state when the diversity that so vividly describes our citizenry disappears into this chasm of polarization?

This two-party political duopoly is no accident. Majority parties routinely gerrymander to secure favorable election results. The financial resources available via parties are critical to candidate success, and the threat of being “primaried” in party-denominated primaries is a powerful inducement to toe the party line. Majority party legislators select the House Speaker and Senate President Pro-Tempore and the chairs of all committees, wielding critical legislative power.

Even our sense of political compromise has been corrupted. We use the term "bipartisanship" as if there are only two sides to our political dialogue. So much for the voice of the “unaffiliated.” This political duopoly has troubling effects on government operations and the substance and quality of public discourse. Combined with government complexity and inadequate transparency, we now see people’s growing discomfort and fading trust and confidence in government.

Too often, government action means piling programs on top of programs. The resulting volume of program possibilities, rules, and regulations (not to mention the partisan agendas embedded in them) breeds inefficiency, makes government inaccessible to the people and defies the essential link between government actions and tangible results for the people.

The effects of our political duopoly extend far beyond the State House steps. The pressures to conform to the beliefs and “facts” of one side or the other – conforming to one’s “tribe” – are all too real and drive us apart.

Hope is no elixir for these issues; the checks and balances of our political and public sector institutions show no signs of addressing these problems. Quite the contrary, the inertia to preserve our political duopoly seems as strong as ever. The ultimate check and balance, though, lies in the first words of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution: “We, the people…”

In the end it is we, the people, who are responsible for protecting and continuing our democracy. We always have been. And now, more than ever, we need to exercise that precious right and power to address threats to our democracy. And it is our rich diversity of perspectives, experiences and knowledge that can generate innovative solutions to the rapidly changing world before us.

There are an increasing number of citizen initiatives around the nation that are seeking to address and resolve the extreme partisanship and polarization now plaguing our political systems. Here in the Granite State, New Hampshire Together is holding a series of conversations inviting our neighbors to discuss, in small groups irrespective of political view, ways to address the extreme polarization so prevalent in our society today. New Hampshire Together aims to identify issues of widespread concern, to hear different perspectives, to evaluate promising solutions and to act to produce meaningful change. You can learn about ways to join the conversations at newhampshiretogether.us/participate.

We can’t wait for our political systems to heal themselves. We need to take on the responsibility gifted to us in our Constitution and engage with this moment. It won’t be easy. It’ll take work – and time – to draw us back together. But I don’t know anyone who thinks the current state of affairs is good for our state or our nation, today or tomorrow. I don’t know anyone who wants this to be the American democracy we leave our children and grandchildren.

Let’s do better. Together.

Eric Herr lives in Hill, NH, where he served as town moderator and where he writes frequently on voter engagement and the democratic process. He is a member of the advisory council of New Hampshire Together and has chaired New Hampshire’s Judicial Council and served on several other state commissions. He has held senior positions in the business and not-for-profit sectors and also served on the staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.