The PolyPartisan

I’m watching CNN right now, and there’s a discussion going on about why the major parties are failing to attract voters who are within their policy/position umbrellas.  For instance, why aren’t social conservatives getting out to vote for Republicans?  Why aren’t liberals getting out to vote for Democrats?

The answer is so simple and obvious as to be painful.

Voters aren’t on board with the major parties because the major parties don’t represent most voters.  After all, only around 2/3 of registered voters felt close enough to a major party to register with it, and many of those did so on account of only a few issues out of many.  It got me thinking about the nature of the process, and how strange it is that for something as important as your representative in Congress, you usually get two choices.

Two choices?

We paint ideologies along spectra.  It’s rare for someone to be entirely on one pole, and most people gravitate toward the center.  Not only that, but we don’t all simply fall into two categories.  Again, why are social conservatives expected to be fiscal conservatives and support perpetual warfare?  Why are civil rights activists expected to be socialists?  For that matter, why am I forced to choose which of my moral values are to be represented by my political representatives?  I’m not trying to imply that we should each be represented by someone who is just like us in every way, but I think that more than two choices are in order.

Choosing between two extremes, with no option in the middle, and no “line item” control, is not democracy.

It’s not even a true republic.  It’s something less than that; it’s the Cliff’s notes, True/False high school exam version.  We are smarter than that, even the average voter.  We can do better, even if just by adding more choices.

Today I talked to a lot of voters.  Something that I’m learning as I interact with a wider and wider slice of the electorate is that most people want democracy.  Most people want different views, including moderate views, to be represented in government.  And if you ask them about it, most people like the idea of limiting the power of parties- although the issue is strangely distant from the forefront.

Looking at the state of our government today, the state of disconnect that many voters still have even after an election with unprecedented involvement, and the new technologies that enable us to communicate in new ways, there has never been a better time for this movement to happen.

We can definitely do it.  We can definitely change the face of American politics.

All it takes is the effort and confidence to do it.

As you start to talk to people about canging government, keep the numbers in mind.  Most people don’t realize just how powerful their influence can be.  Most people are surprised to learn that Congressmen can be elected by as few as 80,000 voters.  They’re more surprised that a group that would fit in a single large stadium (less than 200,000) can achieve congressional representation.  One woman remarked to me upon learning that, “Maybe I should run!”  And maybe she should.

I’m not suggesting we underestimate.  200,000, the number we need to guaranty victory, is still a huge number.  Because for every vote we achieve, we’ll need to make at least 5 voter contacts- that means over a million voter contacts, per race.  But each volunteer can achieve several voters, so we need to look at the steps we’ll have to take.  We’re at step one right now, which is just identifying the parties and helping to get them on board.  (Actually, I am at step zero- designing the movement and convincing my readers to help.).

This is the beginning of a long and exciting race.

Here’s a simple volunteer opoprtunity that anyone with some free time and access to Google  can do.

One of the first things needed to get this project off the ground is a list of relevant “third” parties.  Not to imply bias, but I have some basic criteria for what I presently consider to be a “compatible” party:

• Viable: Based on demographics and values, must be able to muster at least the required 80,000 voters in at least one district in America.
• Willing: Must be persuadable to participate in the program, regardless of immediate expression of interest (expressed interest preferred)
• National: Must exist across state lines and represent the interests of a group that is not strictly limited by local geography.
• Ethical: While freedom of expression is the goal, certain values, such as blatant racism and other forms of bigotry, are not welcome.  For example, the Nazi party is not welcome.  Some non-mainstream or questionable values, such as endorsement of certain currently illegal activities, will be permitted but not tacitly endorsed.

It is not the goal of polypartisan.org or this writer to explicitly or implicitly endorse any party or candidate at this time.  The intent is principally to provide networking, organizing, and strategic services.

There might be other criteria besides these, but the general rules are common sense based.  Since our goal is not limited to one ideology, we will inevitably accept some groups that don’t like each other, and volunteers may be helping to support groups they disagree with.

Right now, I just need to identify parties.  Name of party and web site is sufficient.

Ideally, please either contact a representative of the party and inform him or her of the project’s existence, or locate contact information for a contact in the party.

I wonder what you’d think of the project I’m planning for the next (2010) election.

What is your opinion generally about the two party system?  I happen to think that on the whole it’s a problem.  Both the Republican and Democrat platforms are severely flawed, and with the bipartisan system voters are always forced to choose not so much the lesser of evils, but which values are important to them and which don’t matter.  While it is logically impossible for there ever to be a party for every perspective, having only two polarizing choices is harmful because if forces voters to support people who specifically are against them.  For instance, why is it that the same party that is anti-abortion is pro death penalty?  Many people, such as myself, view those as logically incompatible views.  Similarly, why does the party that favors government benefits for the poor and disabled allow predatory lenders to flourish, and occasionally endorse trade agreements that are harmful to low end American jobs?

Neither party is perfect, less than half the population support either one, and independent voters like me are always forced to choose a side based on only some issues we care about.  That’s one problem.

The other problem is that at all times, some ideologically organized group tends to have a controlling majority share of the government.  With only two parties, the odd numbered Supreme Court tends to balance either Right or Left, the Presidency and cabinet have been predominantly unipartisan with a few short lived token examples for over a century, and both the House of Representatives and the Senate tend to be controlled by whichever party has 51% or slightly more.  So bills get passed with wording that most (>50%) of Americans would not prefer, and the wording of most bills that gets passed often includes a partisan agenda.  This is a problem for a number of reasons which are obvious enough.

The solution, at a glance, is simple.  Eliminate the single party majority.  Prevent any single ideological organization from ever gaining over 50% of either house, and over time, add additional choices to the candidacy for president and ultimately, the supreme court.

Polypartisan politics are not innovative.  The United States has often had several major parties, whether by schism within a previously major party, due to issues based organization.  These parties have often been pretty successful.  Probably the most famous “upstart” third party is the Republican party, which displaced the Whigs shortly before the Civil War.  Why the Whigs went away is slightly unclear to me, but the extreme similarity to the nascent Republican party, in conjunction with generally low public satisfaction, definitely contributed.

I don’t believe that common simplemindedness is singlehandedly responsible for the failure of third parties.  I do blame laziness and poor organization.

In the past few years, third parties in America have been little more than jokes and publicity stunts.  Many don’t even nominate their own candidates but instead endorse major party candidates.  When thirds do run, they most famously tend to accomplish nothing but cannibalizing the votes of the closest major party.

This is what I want to accomplish.  I want to give 10% of the House of Representatives to third parties.  This will prevent either major party from being able to simply have its way with the congress.  They’ll be deadlocked until they start applying common sense and reason, and more importantly, writing policies that include democratically determined compromises and that therefore start to consider the needs of the American People as a whole, not just special interest groups.

The big question is how to get there, and why we’re not there already.  Some basic facts.  In 2006, an NBC poll reported the highest mid-term voter turnout in recorded history, 40% of registered voters.  The average population of a congressional district is 646,946 people.  There are 540 districts right now, ranging in size from 495,304 to 905,316.

As of the 2006 elections, while the Senate is 49-49 with two declared independents, the House is clearly dominated by the Democrats with 53%, and while other parties listed on Wikipedia’s demographics page did garner enough votes to own several districts.  there isn’t a single independent or third party in congress.

The general strategy is to target campaigns in specific “winnable” districts.  A winnable district is one in which the running third party shares values that are popular in that district, with an unpopular incumbent, with economical access to relevant major media, and ideally, in which the unpopular incumbent shares similar ideals with the running third party.

Out of an overall population, only a moderate percentage are eligible voters.  Accounting for age, criminal status, and citizenship status, it’s safe to assume that only about 70% of the population is eligible to vote.  (There’s an official stat for this somewhere, which is within about +/-5 points of 70 to my memory, but I don’t know where to find it).  Of the eligible population, about 40% tend to vote, and anywhere from 51% to 80% choose the winning candidate.  So 650k * 0.7 * 0.4 * 0.5 (or 0.8).  This is a range of from 91,000 to 145,600 voters selecting the typical congressman.  Alternately put, combining the percentages, from 20% to 40% of the voting eligible population selects each representative.

This means that encouraging as few as 1 in 5 eligible voters, or as few as 1 in 3 non-habitual voters, to support a candidate for Congress can get him or her elected.  Let me repeat: As few as 91,000 encouraged voters can unseat an incumbent, and just less than 150,000 can nearly guarantee victory.

This year’s presidential election has demonstrated the importance and the power of grass roots politics and building movements.  Specifically, we’ve now seen how a candidate can fundraise tremendously by soliciting small donations from lots of like minded voters.  We can apply this to our project in a very specific way: since political parties are usually organized nationally, we can use the parties to fundraise nationally. By fundraising nationally, thousands of small contributions of as little as $5 to $10 each can have a huge impact.  Within the campaign finance rules, there is no limit to the campaigning that a party can do as long as the individual and PAC donation limits are not exceeded, and for our purposes, it is doubtful that individual limits would be an issue, though PAC contributions may be.

The new PAC, tentatively named Polypartisan.org, will be focused on helping coordinate the campaigns of third parties and encouraging parties to each focus their efforts on one targeted congressional district.  In addition, the PAC will do some independent fundraising which will be distributed to needy third parties with a shot at winning.  To prevent bias, some rules may need to be established governing the decisions of the PAC, including a mission statement or constitution enumerating the goals set forth in this message.

To reiterate, the simple goal is to break the partisan gridlock by helping third parties to elect congressmen.  I don’t particularly care which third parties get elected, though I would like to try and support a balanced grouping.  My goal here is not to accomplish or advance a single ideology, just to protect democracy from the destruction it’s been undergoing under the two party system and to hopefully pave the way for real growth and change.

Ultimately, I’d like to see the major parties erode down to minor pluralities of at most the 35-37% that they currently represent among the real voting population, and I’d like to see that goal realized in both houses of congress as well as many state legislatures.  Once that point is reached, there will be a real chance of a “third party” candidate being successful for the presidency, at which point we would begin to see real politial diversity enter the supreme court as well.

So what do you think?  I’m going to need a lot of help to make this happen.  I’ll need a few computer people to build, develop, and maintain both the major web sites for the PAC and its campaigns, as well as targeted marketing campaigns through Facebook, Myspace, Google Adwords, et cetera.  I’ll need at least one attorney.  I’ll need a lot of people to volunteer some time to make phone calls.  I’ll need word of mouth and eventually, canvassers.  My target will be 11 congressmen (2%) in 2010, so we’ll be supporting 11 simultaneous races spread out between up to 11 different parties and in very diverse locations and each one will need volunteers.

This is going to be a unique effort because I’m not aware of many if any PACs that have ever made an effort to support multiple parties simultaneously.  “We” (we means me and you!) need some volunteers from day 1 (this is actually like day -5) for everything from hosting and web design, a logo and some slogans, to locating parties and candidates, et cetera.

I further suspect that this new movement has the potential to be enormously popular.  Polypartisan.org is registered and hosted.  .com is registered without hosting.

Please contact me via jayratch@gmail.com to volunteer in any way.