Jock Gill and I have talked, and as a result I have purchased the following additional domain names:

American-Voters-Party.org
Americas-Voters-Party.org
My-Alternate-Party.org
Universal-Voters-Party.org

Jock favors American-Voters-Party.org. I have conceptualized the the Americas party as a big Latino plus, with the concept extended to the other countries in the Americas, where this altrnative political second home could have a good effect. Universal may be too early. On balance, I think My-Alternative-Party.org is the best, because of the alt.org connection as well as the extendibility to every country in the world while avoiding the universal or "world government" negatives. Comments from anyone?

NOTE: Those of you making wonderful comments on the list, would be helpful if they were made here instead.

Have also bought:

My-Alternative-Party.org
My-Politics-Hack-Home.org

Well, if we want to support 3rd parties, then we really need fusion voting - to give 3rd parties some clout, rather than being a way to dilute votes.

For those in MA, there's a ballot initiative coming up in the fall, to establish fusion voting.

For details (and to learn more about fusion voting in general), go to http://www.massballotfreedom.com/

Miles Fidelman

I completely agree with Miles, that can be part of the electoral reform list. Below is a long comment from Tom Atlee, the leading guru for Co-Intelligence, visit him at www.co-intelligence.org.

Dear Robert,

The idea of a political party that people of
diverse other parties can join for common work
around particular issues (like electoral reform)
is an interesting companion strategy to
transpartisanship
for
reducing the unhealthy divisiveness of partisan
politics and revealing the greater common ground
shared by most Americans.

You use the term "dual citizenship party" to
describe this. I find myself using "dual
partisanship" or "multipartisanship" to describe
the overall approach. It says you're talking
about parties, while bypassing the reductionist
term "bi-partisan" which connotes only Democrats
and Republicans. (Talking about a "multipartisan
party" would really blow the partisan concept
sky-high!)

Whatever it's called, it is a very intriguing idea.

If a new party such as you propose were to have a
single focus, your choice of electoral reform is
a good one, However, I think
(a) it will be harder than you think to create a
consensus among partisans about specific
electoral reforms (there are so many
possibilities, and most are controversial) and
(b) there are more issues than electoral reform,
around which common ground could be built, so
your logic begs to be extended to them.
To address both these factors, citizen
deliberative councils

could be a major resource.

Interestingly enough, the most successful (and
advanced!!) recent citizen deliberative council
was British Columbia's Citizens Assembly on
Electoral Reform (2004, with recommendations
voted on by electorate 2005). For a brief
description, see
.
For up-to-date detailed information on the idea
and how it has spread (across Canada, to
California, to Netherlands, etc), see Jim
Snider's blog on the subject
. Jim
is right in DC. I get his news digest. If you
choose to go in a direction such as this, you
might want to contact him.
Jim Snider
J.H. Snider, Ph.D.
Senior Research Fellow
New America Foundation
1630 Connecticut Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20009
Website: www.newamereica.net
Blog: www.jhsnider.net/citizensassembly

My own sense of the most transformational
approach to a new party would be one that
explicitly represents "the people's voice" as
discovered through the use of citizen
deliberative councils. This party (The People's
Voice Party? The American Common Ground Party?)
would have only one independent plank in its
platform: To convene citizen deliberative
councils to find out what We The People want, and
to institutionalize such councils in various ways
in our political and governmental systems, as
suggested in "Using Citizen Deliberative Councils
to Make Democracy More Potent and Awake"

and elsewhere. Beyond that, all the party's
positions would come from what We The People said
via well-designed citizen deliberative councils
(CDCs). ("Well-designed" is a key term here, and
there is much to do to ensure that condition is
met.) This party's candidates -- asserting
government of, by and for the people is their
primary value -- would pledge to promote those
CDC-derived positions even if they personally
disagreed with them, declaring that the evolving,
informed, deliberative will of We The People is
the sacrosanct and proper sovereign authority in
a democratic society.

I never thought of making such a party
"dual-partisan", but I can see how that approach
could greatly expand what is possible, since it
wisely embeds this transpartisan "meme" deep into
the existing partisan structure (just as the
evolutionary spirituality meme is embedding
itself into existing religious ideologies and
institutions).

I will be interested in talking about all this on
my list, but wanted to discuss these things with
you first.

I am also concerned about the name. "The
American Independence Party" sounds a bit too
much like "The American Independent Party", a
very conservative and sizable third party founded
by George Wallace for his 1968 segregationist
presidential bid. I wonder about that
association. Today the AIP is affiliated with
the Constitution Party (which Wikipedia says has
the third largest number of registered voters,
with its California affiliate still being called
the American Independent Party). See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Independent_Party
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Party_%28United_States%29

If it is about electoral reform, you might call
it something like "The All Americans Electoral
Reform Party". If its mandate is broader than
that, think of something like "The American
Common Ground Party" or "The People's Voice
Party" or "The All-America's Voice Party". Of
course, ideally, something as basic as a party's
name would be market-researched extensively
before being finalized. Note that there are 66
official US political parties listed at
.
One wouldn't want to be lost in that crowd.

Rather than a new party, perhaps it would be
better to promote the dual-partisanship and/or
electoral reform memes to one or more existing
parties.

Or perhaps you need a novelist or filmmaker to
create a compelling adventure story with
something like this at its core. Ted Turner
sponsored a high-reward contest for the best
environmental novel, which brought forth ISHMAEL,
now very famous and influential in environmental
circles. It was an interesting approach for
spreading ideas....

As it is personally, with my primary gifts being
intellectual, visionary and networking rather
than organizational, I would be happy to help
think about this (as above), but not to get
involved in the organizing work. Starting a
serious political party is a totally
life-aborbing activity. Should you want to do
it, I'm happy to consult from the sidelines and
talk about it (always from a nonpartisan or
transpartisan perspective, given the nature of my
work), but not to get more closely involved.

Coheartedly,
Tom

PS: Another approach that makes sense to me
would be to have an open space conference about
Innovations in Democracy, where advocates of
hundreds of democratic innovations can mix with
people seeking innovations to promote -- which,
if done right, could even generate new integrated
innovations or collaborative projects (including
political parties) that could move things along.
But that, too, is a major organizing challenge.

A wise person suggested Citizens Party or Citizens. I was able to purchase:

Citizens-Party.org
Citizens-Collective.org

You all tell me what sounds best to you.

A very interesting idea. Neutralize the polarizing features of the parties from within.

I would suggest not calling it a "party" or "collective," but a "campaign" in order to distinguish it from a permanent entity in opposition to the present parties.

Mitch, although I understand your point, I think the idea has both lasting value, and international value.

Lasting value: serves as a kind of League of Women Voters on Steroids, where moderated Republicans (my selfish interest) can find allies against extremist Republicans on any of a variety of issues over time--but this first time out, we coalesce ONLY on electoral reform.

International: this concept has serve as a break on autocratic populism such as is sweeping Latin America, while empowering people in any country and then creating transnational bridges on key transnational issues.

Does that make sense?

My OTHER new idea, sparked by a question from Jock about immigrants not yet voters, is that this new NON-RIVAL party could be a home for immigrants earning their way toward citizenship, and be a place where they can learn English, preview the other parties (like a fraternity system, no rush until the end), get an ID card showing their progress toward citizenship, and generaly be energized, the idea being we don't care WHICH party you join in the end, but JOIN one and stay active.

Does that sound interesting? I think we could pull at least half the Latinos and Asians on this latter idea. And of course get tight with the unions.

Robert

So who gets to write the policy platform for your new party, Robert? What's the organizational structure going to be? Who gets to make decisions? I admire your enthusiasm but building a new heirarchy isn't the answer to the problems caused by our current crop of corrupted heirarchies. We need to figure out how to build something that really is revolutionary, a fundamentally new kind of structure. We need to harness the power of networks, the force of self-organization to create whatever this thing that comes next will be.

I know what a voracious reader you are, have you read Yochai Benkler's "Wealth of Networks" yet? What about the RAND paper "Tribes, Institutions, Markets, Networks"? We need to learn how to build a network-based organization, one that structures itself by the actions of all its members rather than having a structure imposed on it by "leaders".

Think truly boldly. Think about convening a summit to figure out the really hard problems, like how to build a functional self-organized political system. Invite the real movers & shakers: hackers, coders, complexity theory mathematicians, social network analysts. Put all of -them- in a room & see what they come up with. Then you'll really have something.

Twenty-five people had this very conversation with Dean, late November 2004 in Dearborn MI: given three choices, which should he take to effect real change? 1) run in 2008; 2) run for DNC Chair; 3) start a 3rd party. I know he had this same chat with the same questions across the country during the next four weeks, and the answers invariably came out the same.

If he waited and ran in 2008, we would surely lose 2006 and not have the organization required to win -- whether Dean won the primary or not. If he worked with us to start a 3rd party, we could not assure ourselves the critical mass required to overcome the roughly 45%+ conservative vote. So DNC Chair it was; rebuild the party from the inside out, from the grassroots up and the Chairmanship down, to build an organization that would have the 45%+ progressive vote while working to appeal to the moderate right (Deaniacs and DFA'rs do count a considerable number of Independents and Republicans among their ranks already; we knew it could be done.)

And now you're revisiting the 3rd Party question, believing that the Dems are unable to form the party which will appeal to the moderate/centrist Republicans. Here's what I think led you to this question: you've no data but what the mainstream, corporate-owned media have told you about the current state of the Democratic Party. You believe progressives have no ideas that will appeal to your more conservative values. And you'd be misinformed.

As I see it, we Dems are now at a point where we must have a housecleaning of our own, and we must be effective at it, or we will not only not be able to win, but unable to clean house if we were able to take back a majority. We have far too many middlemen who are entrenched in a stale worldview, members among the consultancies (Shrum, for example), and the DLC/DSCC/DCCC. These folks are far too comfortable with an old model of representative politics and representative government, in a time when we the people are better equipped to represent ourselves. The same folks are not likely to give up their power (what remains of it) without a scuffle, but their remaining in power is an obstacle to the little d-democratic process since they obstruct our will. The Duckworth-Cegelis and Brown-Hackett primaries are perfect examples of the middlemen interfering with the voice of constituents; the hard feelings about these anti-democratic interventions are brewing and fomenting among many progressives if you are reading DailyKos, MyDD and FireDogLake.

To you I ask: Show me the numbers. Show me how, by the numbers, a third party will assure a WIN in 2008. My numbers tell me that it would be easier for progressives to remove several handfuls of obstructive Dems than it is to get moderate/centrist Republicans to move to a 3rd party. Show me otherwise.

If it were that easy for moderate/centrist Republicans to move to a 3rd Party, a 3rd way, were at all ready to move away from the current administration and the RNC, they do not give evidence by the votes of moderate/centrist Republicans in either the House or the Senate.

As for the idea of another outside party for immigrants: as a person of mixed race and ethic background, I find the idea repugnant. It smacks of separate-but-equal treatment. Immigrants want what all other American children of immigrant heritage have, not something diluted and unequal. I'll back off that perspective if you can find immigrants who disagree with me.

How does it come out right until we no longer have government of, by, and for the corporations; and how does that happen short of real campaign finance reform (overturning Buckley v. Valeo); and how does that happen given the make-up of the Supreme Court?

I'd like to be optimistic. The founding fathers did a great job trying to get a balance of power, being cogizant of human nature, and particularly of the nature of people who tend to seek power. But they could't foresee corporations with wealth exceeding that of nations.

The entire political system needs to be rearchitected using the new concepts of network math & tools that exploit them. The Founding Fathers made a really good first approximation but we've got better math than they did. Whether you use Metcalfe's Law or Reed's Law to measure it, there's a power in networks that can be exploited to give the people an advantage over corporate money & black intelligence technology (see Col. Sam Gardiner's seminal paper Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II for details).

But it's really complex (haha) stuff & we're still figuring out how to use it. If you really want to solve the problem of governance for the 21st Century & beyond, bring together the people who can do the math, who can write the code, who can design, test & build a new kind of system that's stronger, fairer & less vulnerable all at once. It's us hackers that're gonna save you in the end, the sooner somebody sees that & gives us what we need to make it happen the sooner we can get it done. Robert knows, that's why he's been hanging out with us for more than a decade now. Well, that's my little rant for the day.

Robert, I understand your point. So, you're actually suggesting obliterating the parties from the middle. That's a promising idea and one that, politically, resonates for me. However, new parties attract as much corruption as old parties, they simply benefit from not having that corruption today.

I like the idea of a permanent body like the League of Women Voters, but that is not a party but a project, like I suggested. There may be nothing wrong with acknowledging that there are two general camps in America, represented by the parties. The coalition that sits outside that system and unites where the public can come together if they have a route to cooperation outside the parties, while leaving the parties to their frictive and sometimes entertaining ways, would attract my support. But I don't vote a straight ticket and a lot of folks do, so who knows what the non-abnormal person (e.g., not me) would think?

I don't agree that the political system can be rearchitected as Tim suggests, because it has to evolve, not be built, which happens through people acting. An architect sits outside and, frankly, is totally unaccountable to the people of the system. Hacker ethic or no, political systems that have been architected are famously brittle and prone to collapse and/or opportunism by strong men.

While I am not sure we have a lot of time, I want to give the problem time to join with the citizens' will. That requires leadership. So, I'd suggest we get down to finding leaders and recruiting and supporting them, locally, statewide and nationally, within the framework of accountability we've all been talking about for a long time know. Once they win a few offices, the reforms will come. Got to win first.

Yes, networks are grown. But the medium they grow in, in this case the software that supports them, is not grown but designed & architected. The social network ecosystem of the blogosphere was grown, but the blog software that enabled it was designed. Wikis are a socially grown structure on top of software that was designed. It's fortuitous that the social network structures that grew on those software substrates turn out to have interesting & useful properties.

With a greater understanding of which software structures lead to which social network topologies & what the implications are for the robustness, innovativeness, error correctiveness, fairness, etc. of those various topologies, software can be designed that will intentionally & inevitably lead to the growth of political social networks that are more robust, innovative, fair & error correcting than the heirarchical pyramid-structured political parties that we have today.

Replacing one pyramid with another is not the solution we need; no matter how well-intentioned we are about how the pyramid gets built, in the end it's still a pyramid.

Tim, I am not suggesting replacing one pyramid with another--that is exactly why I urged Steeler not to think of a party, but a project. Suggesting we find leaders and make leaders is politics in action, because the only way to win this campaign is to get people elected. If you are suggesting we do away with representative government, I'll stop the discussion right here.

However, assuming we're really talking about our shared belief in a better way, I would point out that you are committing the fallacy of thinking that the tools can redefine the process before the public embraces the idea that they can be governed differently. By winning campaigns using these tools we make the point change is possible, but it is still up to the people to call for and embrace change. Insisting that the system must first be retooled postpones any hope of enacting change, because we end up talking about action rather than acting.

I've spent years thinking and working on the relationship between technology and organizations and see a lot of potential for the short list (which can be much longer) of tools you point to, but I don't agree they *inevitably* lead to better and fairer networks. If you begin with the assumption that the tools must be implemented by some group, like a party, that will then impose their model on the world, there is an intrinsic imbalance of power that results from the narrowing of choices society might make along the way. They may appear to meet your criteria, as architect, for change, but they don't address everyone's priorities by any stretch of the imagination.

My off-the-cuff way of explaining this problem through analogy is that there are people in the progressive-technology wing of political action who believe they can rearchitect the political system because of their expertise in technology that are very like the military veterans who say that, having fought a war with command and control structures for their country, they are entitled to greater influence in their society. They often introduce command metaphors that pervert the notion of democratic leadership. Neither group is justified, and technologists need to be far more careful about their presumptions to change, even if technology is transforming society, because the benefits of change are seldom proven in a lifetime. Albert Camus summed up the reality of these types of hubris when discussing the role of former resistance fighters in post-WWII France, when he said that having accepted certain greater responsibilities in the past they are only entitled to accept greater sacrifices in the name of the nation later; they don't have a claim to leadership. Being a change agent doesn't make you a viable architect of society, just a part of its evolution.

Respectfully, I think some of you are missing the point. The Citizens Party is a NON-RIVAL second home party, NOT NOT NOT a "third party." It is a citizens safety net that respects the 60+ existing parties, of which around 5-6 really merit a share of the Congressional representation. We need to get away from the winner take all/party line system and I really want to emphasize that for now, the Citizens Party is ONLY about electoral reform. It could play a balancing role later on other issues, but the one thing that the have to help with now is electoral reform. No way no how will the idiotic corrupt Democratic leadership win base on base or issue on issue. Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton are NOT going to beat John McCain or Colin Powell. Only a coalition that agrees to elect a coalition can take back the power.

Bob—I understand that point, the question I am raising is whether using the word "party" isn't going to be counter-productive.

The Citizens' Coalition that unites reasonable people of all parties is easier to explain than: The [Insert Name Here] Party That Isn't A Party.

Electoral reform, alas, is going to be the spoils for the victor campaigning for electoral reform. So, if we were to start with a call for a reform bill, like you've suggested, that's a solid start toward the coalition working for candidates that will deepen those reforms after being elected.