A New Party Dedicated to Implementing Public Voting

[Ed Pastore]

There are some surrounding issues that make me want to take both approaches. If an organization is conducting activities such as a primary, then (at least in the U.S.), I think it must be registered as a political party. More to my concern, I believe that the only way any E2D-like movement can see success in the U.S. is through substantial funding and therefore publicity. That again requires registration as a party (before gathering or spending the first thousand dollars).

A well-funded, well-thought-out national party can prevent the creation of redundant competitors. Currently there appear to be none in the United States. There is a Pirate Party, but they have no visibility and really the Pirate platform is very different from E2D. For one thing, they have a platform, while E2D is (in my mind) completely neutral on all issues except the meta-issues of corruption and politics.

Additionally, this paradigm requires a good registration process. As you know from Metagov, I think governance should be open to whomever feels like participating. But with the imperfect hack of E2D (again, primarily as a bridge and an eye-opener), there is no way it would fly with Americans if foreigners or even people from another American locality could participate in any way in their elections or even primaries.

The way I'm looking at it for now is to go ahead with fundraising and publicity, and allow self-nomination of candidates (as Rhett is doing) up until the point where a primary function can be implemented. There's no reason for that not to be an open primary such as yours, but with all of the above, I think the party is also necessary.

P.S. It's noteworthy that confidence in the U.S. Congress has dropped to a historically-low and amazingly-low 10%:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/06/13/confidence-in-congress-drops-to-historic-low/


On Jun 13, 2013, at 4:10 PM, Michael Allan wrote:

> Rhett said:
>> For me, at least to begin with, success looks like winning a local
>> election next year. ...
> 
> ... to which Ed agrees.  I suggest you both seek the ballot nomination
> through a special kind of electoral primary.  I'm thinking of a
> primary that is:
> 
>  * Open to all electors and nominees regardless of party affiliation;
>    so it's not torn apart by political tensions
> 
>  * Open to all voting methods (present and future); so it's not torn
>    apart by technical tensions
> 
>  * Public; so it's exciting to participate in, or just to follow
> 
>  * Runs continuously beginning now, and never stops
> 
> I suggest we do this instead of organizing a party.  Organizing a
> party on E2D/DEMOEX lines would bring us into competition with similar
> parties that are popping up everywhere.  It would be a pointless brawl
> and a detour because the only outcome would be the open primaries as
> outlined above, which would finish off the E2D parties.  No party can
> survive the fact of open primaries.  This is maybe where I can help
> (for my part), in laying down some of those technical facts.
> 
> With the time and money we save (avoiding a battle with the Pirates
> and other E2D zombies), we could discover a more viable model for an
> organization.  Or other opportunities.
> 
> Mike
> 
> 
> Ed Pastore said:
>> Agreed. The reason I define success as complete dominance of the political structure is because we're talking about, in essence, an anti-party. It has no political platform on issues; simply moving the issue debate into the hands of the people.
>> 
>> So as Rhett suggests, it's not meant to last for a particularly long time. It's meant to be a stepping stone: to open up people's minds to the reality that they don't have to be controlled by politicians. As they get used to that, eventually they'll realize that the representative is just a vestige of the old system and can be dispensed with altogether.
>> 
>> 
>> On Jun 12, 2013, at 7:43 PM, Rhett Pepe wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Mike and Ed,
>>> 
>>> For me, at least to begin with, success looks like winning a local election next year. If I can't do that, I'll put my main focus on to launching a software company.
>>> 
>>> If I can do that, I'll stop my job and have four paid years to build up the voting system and hopefully get together with Ed and merge into one political effort. From this point, success will look like improving the party in terms of voting, membership, and winning elections. 
>>> 
>>> Eventually, perhaps, direct democracy will replace representative democracy all together. 
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> 
>>> Rhett
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