My friend owns a home near me and pays local taxes. He sends his daughter to public school. I also write about and analyze politics for a living. But it’s all national politics; the local is only a blip. Honestly, he doesn’t really know what’s at stake in any local election. None of his neighbors seem to be paying much attention either. They all want to talk about national politics too.

He’s not alone. The overwhelming majority of Americans consume disproportionately more news about national politics than about state and local politics. In one analysis, 99 percent of respondents in a typical media market never visited websites dedicated to local news. In a typical local election, fewer than one in five citizens bother to vote.

There are at least half a million elected officials in the United States. Only 537 of them are federal. And yet almost all of our collective attention is on those federal officials and in particular, just one of them: the president. As a result, elections these days, at every level of government, increasingly operate as a singular referendum on the president. Candidates matter less and less, party more and more.

If you’re looking for a single takeaway, it’s this: America’s Constitution created a system that prioritizes place-based voting. We now have nationalized political behavior in which local politics are only interesting to most people as they relate to national politics. This is a serious problem. The disconnect undermines electoral accountability and exacerbates polarization. It has to change!

Claude Smith