A New Party Dedicated to Implementing Public Voting

[Rhett Pepe]

Hi All,

I've got a more concrete plan about what I'm doing that I'd like to share:

1) Before July 4th I'll be improving the UVote Party website
2) For 90 days after that I'll send out mail (10-50 a day) to blogs,
newspaper, television, radio
3) My all or nothing goal will be 60k for a fund raising campaign
4) If I can't reach this goal, I'll stop my efforts in this area till at
least 2018
5) If successful, this money will be to used to get a small yes/no open
source voting platform before November 2014
6) Then, If I'm elected I'll have more time to build the organization and
voting software
7) My plan for the 60k is to create a non profit corp just to build staged
open source voting technology.

I'm seeking near term help with polishing the website and fundraising if
that is something anyone is interested in helping with.
If successful over the 60k mark, then perhaps there could be some payment
for fundraising efforts.

Best,

Rhett


On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 1:10 AM, conseo <conseo at polyc0l0r.net> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Michael Allan wrote:
> > 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.
>
> I will just skip here and sketch an argument for a more organic approach.
> While thinking big is necessary in terms of totality, this totality has to
> be
> plausible in relation to all of its parts. There are plenty of
> contradictions
> in current state-level or official institutions, so just copying one of
> their
> approaches will bring little new. Instead of discussing these forms we
> should
> discuss how we want to spread democracy. If I am about to be interested in
> your new institution, what can I expect from you?
>
> I have recently read (and am still half-way through) "America Beyond
> Capitalism" from Gar Alperowitz. While I don't share his liberal utopian
> projection, he assembles plenty of facts about American society. Under the
> surface of official politics many things have changed, I will outline a
> few:
>
> - there are more people now in cooperatives than in unions in the private
> sector (and these cooperatives are very often governed democratically).
> (United Steel Workers for instance now coops with Mondragon)
> - 400 billion US$ are hold in Employee Stock Ownership Plans
> - 800 billion 2002 in total, 8% of corporate stock
> - there were 8.8 million worker-owners in the US in 2003
> - there were 48.000 coops operating in the US in 2003
> - 35 % percent of the biggest companies in the US are universities and
> medical
> institutions, they create more than 50% of the jobs (3)
> - Community Development Corporations have sprung from a few hundred to
> nearly
> 4000 in 2003
> ...
>
> My point here is that there exits effective democratical practice on the
> ground which is still scattered all over the place and issues. Instead of
> understanding democracy in terms of the current political institutions, we
> should try to grow our practices from such a successful democratic
> infrastructure, because even if the gains are small we will get positive
> feedback and gain experience from the small d (democracy) for the big D (a
> point Alperowitz draws all the time). We also should take the economical
> point
> seriously, so people should benefit from the process. I can't see that
> happening by building another party or NGO alone (you can do that in this
> institution of course, but this would be additional overhead and legal
> problems etc.)
> Mike and I have already discussed several practices (1) and will start
> exploring them in one month or so. My proposal would be to find a promising
> concrete issue and help people on the ground by bringing them together. An
> open collectively drafted budget for a hands-on issue is most interesting
> imo.
> (2) Since we don't need the institution for that, but only the tools and
> the
> practice, we can determine the form of the institution later. If we raise
> funds first, then we depend on charity and only postpone the problem imo.
>
> What do you think?
>
> conseo
>
> (1) http://www.zelea.com/project/votorola/home.html
> (2) http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/budgeting
> (3) for example: http://evergreencooperatives.com/
>
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