This concept is rather simple, some deatils of which obviously would need to be worked out.. basically: The ratification authority of state and national legislation argued and packaged by the upper and/or lower houses would reside with the state or national electorate directly based on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annual balloting on proposed legislation. Bona fide emergency legislation would be handled by the legislatures directly as needed. States where the initiative peition is legal/lawful/permitted would be the place to start… then, once proven, moving the program national would be perhaps a little less onerous…

more at: Redemocracy: http://www.autobuyology.org/car15.html

To a more peaceful, rational and greener future,

Rand
redemocratist at large

I had one issue with your post, your referenct to “archaic slow processes of government and politics and law enforcement.” Large-scale democratic process is inherently slow. I’m not sure how to get around that fact, but I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts in the next post.

Anyway, I’m quite looking forward to reading some of the operational details on your third party idea. I’ve got some ideas about distributed DSS software that could really open things up as well as a whole suite of distributed OSINT software (automated link analysis & information extraction across a range of news sources to build a constantly growing associational database of knowledge of world events), but in any event it sounds like our visions are a lot closer than it sounded at first. I think I’d like to be involved in it, with or without my own stuff being worked on. And I can bring a lot of my people along with me too.

Tim

ps – If you like, next time I talk to Kore I’ll say hi for you.

Thanks for posting a comment.

Your question has been implicity answered earlier. I refer you to the comments posted on the first Citizens Party post. I quote from a note from Tom Atlee:

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:

http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/public/extra/Whatis.xml

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:

http://www.jhsnider.net/citizensassembly/

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: http://www.newamereica.net
Blog: http://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.

Tom Atlee * The Co-Intelligence Institute * PO Box 493 * Eugene, OR 97440
http://www.co-intelligence.org *
http://www.democracyinnovations.org
Read THE TAO OF DEMOCRACY *
http://www.taoofdemocracy.com
Tom Atlee’s blog http://www.evolvingcollectiveintelligence.org

It’s all well & good to wave your hand vaguely at “collective intelligence,” but how committed are you to using it in practice at all levels within the decision-making apparatus of the organization itself? Do you have a proven collective intelligence model ready to install & implement off-the-shelf? Will the membership actually be engaged in making key decisions about the nature, structures, policies & campaigns? Or will we have a new set of bosses installed at the top who make those decisions for us while we’re asked to just follow along on the paths they lay out for us?