A New Party Dedicated to Implementing Public Voting

[Michael Allan]

Ed Pastore said:
> 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.

I was focusing on the electoral aspect for simplicity.  Unfortunately
the conflict doesn't go away if we expand the scope. ...

> 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.

... Open primaries are not restricted to elections.  They also cover
laws, budgets, plans, policies and anything else that depends on the
legitimation of an unforced consensus.

> 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.

Compare this machinery to the open primaries.  Both share the purpose
of increasing the legitimacy (validity) of the body of law.  Both
depend on the mediation of the elected legislator.  But here the
similiarity ends, because here they work differently:

  * The E2D parties work by forcing the elected legislator.

  * The open primaries work by freeing the elected legislator.

Open primaries will fail in their purpose unless the legislator is
free to act as he/she thinks right without restriction (see bottom).
E2D parties, by contrast, will fail unless the legislator is forced.
So the two mechanisms are incompatible here.

> 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.

By "zombie" I mean it looks alive, but really it's dead.  I think you
and Rhett would be wasting your time.

> 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 guess that's an executive primary, not an assembly primary.  It
looks to be mis-designed because it focuses on putting a single person
in office (that guy behind the podium), whereas an executive is more
than a single person.  It also omits the requirements of an open
primary in regard to platform, publicity and continuity.

Despite this (seemingly) botched design, it had lots of nominal
support.  Imagine how much support it would get if it took aim at the
real executive (the power structure as a whole including appointments)
and made it truly open.  I think we should do that.  We could begin
with the mayoral executive in your home town, and Rhett's; not to
mention (ahem) mine.

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

I think either the E2D parties are feasible or the open primaries are,
but not both.  Parties work on the closure of information, while the
open primaries work on the disclosure of information.  The E2D party
must become the exclusive source concerning the "will of the people"
and the obedience of the legislator to that will, while the open
primaries must remove all such exclusions.  Each and every person is
an equally valid source of this information.  It cannot be gathered in
systematically actionable forms without losing its legitimizing force.
The E2D party (a machine) can never know the will of the people, nor
can the legislature (another machine) ever know it; only the people
*as such* can know it.  The purpose of the open primaries is to
facilitate that knowledge among people so they can act upon it.  No
force is required here, only facilitation.

Each legislator must be a person in communication with people, not a
piece of a machine.  Otherwise the necessary information will not get
through to the laws, thence to the machine-like parts of society
(government, economy) that can understand the language of laws, but
not the language of people.  (interpreted from Habermas, most of this)

Mike


> 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.