A New Party Dedicated to Implementing Public Voting

[Ed Pastore]

I think we're talking at cross-purposes to some extent. I still don't see a direct competition between our ideas, because each is an openness in a different aspect of the system.

An open primary is about who wins an election. An open party is about what that person does after they are elected. These are very different slices, and non-competitive. The point of the Open Party is not to be a party, but to advocate and support the non-platform of acting in accordance with the will of the people.

Its primary is only to pick a proxy-candidate, because anyone who wants to win an election must be registered as a candidate by a certain deadline. So in order to run a citizens'-proxy for office, there needs to be someone selected to run. That person could also be a member of another party for all I care. The only thing necessary for them to get Open Party support is that they sign a contract promising that they will follow a set of rules designed to enforce their being a mere proxy.

I think I understand your "zombie" term... you're suggesting it will be one of those countless random spin-up projects that withers on the vine and ends up as a has-been, right? I can certainly see that possibility, and if I pursue the party option, it will be with the explicit intention of making it huge... or abandoning it within a set timeframe if that looks like it isn't working.

But on the other hand, in researching to see if there are existing competitors (and there appear to be zero in the United States, amazingly), I found a zombie open primary. I never even heard of this before, but it looks like it had a lot of backers. Scroll down to see how big it's support base was (is?):
http://www.americanselect.org
and again, despite being plugged-in to this realm, I never even heard of them. As far as I know, they made no impact on the 2012 US election.

I respect your opinion a lot, Mike. Let me know where you think I'm going wrong.

Let me explain some of my motivations here. I'd be happy just working on Metagov full-time, but that's not possible since it's not readily organized as a formal organization, and because it's not a particularly popular idea and thus not likely to bring in so much money that it could pay me the salary I need to support my family. Right now, I spend most of my time and mental effort on a job I don't care about at all... to the extent that I have almost nothing left over for Metagov.

Additionally, Metagov (and Votorola, and I would suspect also the open primary system) are long-term plans for changing things the right way. But in the interim, the U.S. is threatening to spin down into totalitarianism, and in any event it is such a corrupt and sick system that it needs any help it can get as soon as possible. Between the Tea Party and the Occupy movements, I think it is ripe for a more directed approach like the Open Party.

So the idea of the Open Party is meant to allow me to start addressing the woes of the U.S. system now (which conveniently also gets a lot of global visibility) and also to serve the very practical purpose of me earning an income from this sort of project. 


On Jun 15, 2013, at 8:29 PM, Michael Allan wrote:

> Ed Pastore said:
>> ... 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.
> 
> I think there is a reason.  It would immediately destroy the party.
> If you're not in love with open primaries today, you'll be less in
> love after you've invested time and money in building up the party.
> You'll become one of the E2D zombies Ed, you'll join the walking dead.
> 
> Seriously, I want to help and I think we should work together, but the
> parties have no possible future.  Consider what they're up against in
> the open primaries:
> 
>>> * 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
> 
> Based on the primary results, everyone knows who'll be elected long in
> advance of the election.  They know who'll be sitting in the next
> assembly.  How can a party possibly survive when candidates are
> nominated like this?  What possible purpose can it serve?
> 
> I think a different kind of institution is now called for.  Like the
> party system, it will be based on primaries - primaries for composing
> the content of assemblies, of executive hierarchies, of laws, budgets,
> plans and policies - but all radically free and open.  This new
> institution will turn the parties inside out, eliminating the closure
> on which their power is based.  This is why they are finished.
> 
>> 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. ...
> 
> Maybe for a *party* primary.  The whole point of an *open* primary is
> to be unaffiliated with anything, least of all a party.  Freedoms of
> speech and association are sufficient safeguards for this and the
> courts are required to uphold these freedoms.
> 
>> ... 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).
> 
> We can expect open primaries to destroy all parties, including the E2D
> parties.  The reasons are fairly easy to explain.  So we can also
> expect investment and other resources to shift in the direction of the
> open primaries instead of the E2D parties.
> 
> However, if it's necessary to have a party for purposes of marketing
> or funding, then we could have one for these purposes.  I'm thinking
> of a kind of Un-Party that we use (and abuse) without ever becoming
> trapped in it ourselves.  An Un-Party can survive the open primaries
> because it's a party only in form.  (The party form is required
> wherever they have proportional assemblies in any case, because it's
> baked into their constitutions.  So the practice might be somewhat
> portable across borders.)
> 
>> 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 residential registry (e.g. streetwiki) needs work before it can
> carry a big load.  But the load itself might become a resource of
> labour for this purpose.  A streetwiki is an interesting project in
> its own right.  It'll be a newsworthy event when people are running
> their own voter registry independent of the government.  They'll put
> the work into it, because people take care of their own.
> 
> But the only purpose is to ensure that we can view the primary results
> filtered to the electors, which is usually what'll interest us for
> this type of primary.  The purpose is not to prevent the participation
> of others, which is infeasible anyway.  Fortunately only the ideal is
> feasible here: freedoms of speech and association are safeguarded for
> all, and that means the freedom to participate in all 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. ...
> 
> To be sure, an open primary cannot limit anyone's freedom of choice.
> Rhett remains free to stand on the ballot for city council.  The main
> purpose of the open primary is to tentatively inform the electors just
> who they intend to elect come election day.  Hopefully that will be
> Rhett.  In any case, this information is uncovered long in advance of
> the election, and long before the ballots are printed.  The current
> primary winner may always claim (tentatively) to be nominated by the
> electors at large, but this is just a disclosure, not a decision.
> Nothing is disallowed by the primary results.  Open primaries are
> necessarily 100% freedom and 0% restrictions.
> 
> Please take my technical advice, or refute it, and I'll follow you.
> My time is yours.  But I can't follow where reason points to failure.
> 
> Mike
> 
> 
> Ed Pastore said:
>> 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
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