On Sunday, April 14, Pete Buttigieg officially announced his candidacy for President of the United States. Buttigieg is the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Buttigieg, the son of a Maltese immigrant father and an American mother, was raised in the same neighborhood where he now lives. He is a Rhodes Scholar, alumnus of Harvard University and polyglot. He is also an Afghanistan war veteran, an Episcopalian and, if he is elected, would be the youngest President in history.

The ability of our government to advance policy the American people want depends on building a government that truly represents the people. To accomplish this, Buttigieg advocates for dismantling the Electoral College so that every person’s vote counts equally and the overruling of the American people’s choice (which has happened twice the last two decades) is no longer possible. He proposes increasing the number of Supreme Court justices to 15: five who would be appointed by a conservative president, five who would be appointed by a liberal president and five who would be rotated up from appellate courts. The selection of those five would have to be unanimous among the other 10, which would even out the bench by providing a moderate voice.

Climate change is a serious security issue for our generation but we will not make policy advancement without electoral reform first, which is why it must be the second priority of the Buttigieg campaign. Without a government that is responsive to its constituents, any comprehensive efforts to combat the effects of climate change will be strangled in the courts (like parts of the original New Deal were) and we’ll be nowhere. Within a period of 18 months, South Bend had first a 1000-year flood and then a 500-year flood, and the city immediately began researching ways to mitigate the effects of another such flood — especially in hard-hit areas from these last two.