Why It's Necessary

The Root of all Evil

"For the love of money is the root of all evil"... 1st Timothy 6:10, The Bible

"Power in the money, money in the power
Minute after minute, hour after hour" ... Coolio, Gangster's Paradise

"Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with nowadays." ... Will Rogers, June 28, 1931

A few facts

In the 2012 federal elections alone, according to the Federal Election Commission more than $7 billion dollars were spent. (1)

Over $3 billion dollars were spent last year on lobbying in Washington. (2)

There were 12,389 registered lobbyists in 2012 (over 23 per elected federal official).  (2)

Barack Obama's administration has 384 current or former registered lobbyists. (3)

George W. Bush's administration had  664 registered lobbyists. (4)

Of the 97 congressman from last year's congress (the 112th) that have left office, 25 are now lobbyists or working for lobbyist firms. (5)

Adjusted for inflation, since 1960 the average income of someone in the bottom 90% has increased $59.  For someone in the top 10% it has increased $116,000 dollars. (6)



Sources

1. 2012 Federal campaign spending: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/7-billion-spent-on-2012-campaign-fec-says-87051.html
2. Lobbyist spending and total number of lobbyists in 2012: http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/
3. Lobbyists in Obama administration: http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/search_result.php?admin=Barack+Obama&id=10
4. Lobbyists in Bush administration: http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/search_result.php?admin=George+W.+Bush&id=9
5. Members of 112th congress who are now lobbyists:  http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/departing.php?cong=112
6. Average income since 1960 of top 10% vs. bottom 90%: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/25/1772521/average-income-for-the-bottom-90-percent-of-americans-grew-just-59-in-40-years/?mobile=nc

Starting Up

So how do you start a political party?

A political party is just a bunch of people talking.  To really do anything, the people in the party must form an organization called a political committee.  A political committee is similar to a corporation, in that it is a separate entity from the people who are members of the committee.  The committee itself is a legal entity. 

O.k.  So how do you start a political committee?

First you have to figure out the kind of committee to start.  There are different kinds of political committees depending on what you are trying to do.  If you're trying to influence elections in a particular state, you would consult that state's department of elections to see how to form a state committee.  Since we are wanting to do things on a more national scale we would need to form a federal committee.

There are different kinds of federal committees.  At a high level:

• Regular party committees are for political parties
• Candidate committees are for people running for office
• Political action committees (PACs) are for organizations that are politically active but are not a candidate or political party.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) regulates committees that operate on the national level.  Once a political organization accepts $1,000 worth of donations or spends $1,000 in a given calendar year, the organization must file the committee organizing papers with the FEC.

Now you would think that we would want to start a regular party committee, since this whole idea is based on starting a political party.  However, the federal government won't actually recognize a committee as a political party until they have met certain requirements, such as winning federal elections.  So we would actually have to start as a political action committee (PAC).  One of the most important differences between a PAC and a regular party committee is the amounts of money they are allowed to give to candidates.  PAC's have much lower limits than regular party committees.  However, that should not affect our party too much because if this idea works it will work based on word of mouth and grassroots growth, not spending massive amounts of money.  In fact, the political money machine is what we're trying to fix.

O.k.  So how do you start a political action committee?

There are actually even different kinds of political action committees.  We would want to start a non-connected committee.  This basically means that we would not be connected to a corporation or any other committee.

There is a lot of good documentation on the FEC's website about how to start a non-connected committee.  They even publish a PDF guide that walks you through it step by step.  So we would have to follow the rules and laws set forth in that guide.

So where do we begin?

At a high-level, these are the steps, not necessarily in this order:

• Elect a chairman of the board, and other board members
• The chairman appoints a treasurer (and preferably an assistant treasurer)
• Establish bylaws by which the party and board will operate
• File the necessary paperwork with the FEC to establish the committee
• The treasurer opens one or more committee bank accounts
• The treasurer submits regular reports to the FEC regarding the income and expenditures of the committee

That sounds like a lot of work!

 Yes it does, and yes it is.  But that is what you have to do to be a serious political organization.  The good news is you don't have to do all of this until that $1,000 threshold is breached.  So there is time to lay the foundations of the party, build the website, etc., before you have to start reporting everything to the government.  Regardless though, there is going to have to be a core group of people that are dedicated to establishing the party and willing to put in a decent amount of work to get it off the ground.  People who don't have enough time or energy to be that committed can still be members of the party, but they won't be able to be very involved until the necessary organizational structure (including the website) is established by the core group.

So again, where do we begin?

The first step is getting a bunch of interested people together to discuss things, probably in a web conference setting since it's more convenient and people may be spread out geographically.  If you are interested in helping to start this party, or just interested in being a part of it, send an email to politimorph@gmail.com.

The Party Website - A Detailed Vision

The Idea laid out a high-level vision of a new political party whose core belief is taking the power from the representatives and giving it back to the people.  The high-level vision also included a few details about a website that would provide the infrastructure of the party and facilitate this transfer of power.  There are a lot of things that need to be worked out to define exactly what functions this website should provide.  The purpose of this post is to lay out a more detailed vision of how this website could function.

The Basics

The website could provide the following basic functionality:

• A public home page(s) that gives details about the party and the party's core belief.
• A way for people to sign-up for the party (which would simultaneously sign them up to use the website).
• Party members would probably need to be verified, to make sure they're a real person and they live at their stated address.  So there would need to be different levels of party membership (i.e. new member, verified member, etc).  There would need to be administrative screens for administrators of the party to mark someone as verified.
• Contact information for the national organization of the party.
• A way for people to donate money.

More Advanced - Building the Organization

The national organization of the party will need to be setup first to provide the infrastructure of the party and the website.  But once that is done, there will need to be a way for the party to grow.  Again, this can all be coordinated through the website.  The website could:

• Allow someone to search for the nearest local chapter of the party.
• Provide details on how someone can start a local chapter if one does not exist yet in their vicinity, including contact information if they have questions.
• Post details on help that is needed at the national level for people that are interested in helping build the party at the national level.
•  Allow local chapters to setup their own branches on the website where they can post their own content, needs, contact information, etc.
• Provide flyers that people can print out and post in public places, or hand out to their friends and neighbors.
• Provide presentation slides that could be presented at a local meeting that state the beliefs and goals of the party.

More Advanced - Selecting Party Candidates

In order for the core belief of the party to be realized, the party must first get people elected. That means for a particular office we have to choose a single person from our party that we will all vote for - that is how the Republicans and Democrats do it, and that's why they're so successful.  Due to the core belief of our party, it's not as critical who we select to represent us, as long as they agree to adhere to the core belief.  Still, there needs to be a process for people to apply to represent the party, and a way for the party members to choose a final candidate.  Again, the website can facilitate this.  The website could provide:

• A way for administrators of the national and local chapters of the party to post public offices that they would like to target in upcoming elections.
• Applications that someone wanting to be a candidate for an office must fill out.
• A voting process for whittling the candidates for a particular office down to one.  This could be a straight-up winner-take-all vote by party members who would be constituents of the office.  Or if there were enough people vying for the candidacy, it could maybe be a tournament-style process that would consist of several separate votes to get down to the final candidate.

More Advanced -  Elected Officials and Implementing The Core Belief

So now someone from the party has been elected to public office.  There needs to be a way for the core belief of the party to be efficiently administered.  The website could provide the backbone for this as well:

The elected official view

• Provide an interface for elected officials to post summaries of the decisions (votes) that are coming up, along with a date and time by when their constituents need to submit their votes.  The post could also include a link(s) to more detailed information about the issue being voted on. 
• The interface for posting the decision could include a priority-level of the decision.  For example, if it's something the official thinks most party members would care about, they could rank it high.  If it's something the official thinks most party members wouldn't care about, they could rank it low.  These ranks could then help party members filter out the decisions they care most about.
• Provide a view of the decisions that their constituents have voted on, and the results of each.

The member view

• When members login, they could see all of their elected officials, with a special designation for their elected officials that are members of the party.
• The member could select an elected party official and see all of the decisions the official has posted to be voted on, along with the dates by which members must submit their votes.  Members could change their vote up until the cutoff date/time for the decision.
• There could be a view of all of the upcoming decisions from all elected officials the member is a constituent for.
• There could also be a view for the party member to see past decisions from the elected official, how the official voted, how the constituency voted, and the final outcome.
• The members could have a settings screen where they specify how or whether they want to be notified for the decisions that the elected officials are posting.  For example, they may want to receive a text message for high-priority decisions.  And they may want to just receive an email or no notification at all for a low-priority decision.

Even More Advanced - Member-Driven Legislation

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written by average people all across the globe.  It is trusted by millions of people who need to lookup information.  Why couldn't legislation be written the same way?  A party member could start a piece of proposed legislation, and designate a constituency that would be affected by it (i.e. whether it would be a national, state, or local law). Party members in the constituency group for the legislation could edit it, wiki-style.  Once a certain threshold of constituents voted for a version of the legislation, an elected party official could propose it as a bill.

The Idea

Why does it have to be?

The current political system.  The money.  The corruption.  The bickering.  Why does it have to be this way?  Surely this isn't what our founding fathers envisioned when they were fighting and clawing and bleeding to form this nation.  What would they say about an election year where over $7 billion dollars were spent on federal elections alone?  What would they say about Super PACs?  What would they say about two powerful political parties that control the future of the nation, and the lobbyists and wealthy interests that control the parties?

Is there a better way?

What we need is a way to separate the money from the politics.  We need a way to take the power away from the lobbyists, and really away from the elected officials themselves, and give it back to the people.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely, so we need to take away some, or most of their power, and give it back to the people who they are governing.  But how?

Why did our founding fathers choose the representative form of government?

George Washington didn't have email.  He didn't have a telephone.  If he wanted to know what someone thought about something, he had to either physically meet with them, or have someone ride a horse and take a letter.  So it would make sense that he wouldn't expect everyone to be involved in government on a regular basis.  The sheer enormity of getting input from everyone in the nation on every issue would have been ridiculously impractical.  So they devised a system where groups of people would choose representatives, and the representatives would get together and hash things out.  Makes sense 200 years ago.  In fact, I can't think of a better way of doing it... 200 years ago.

How else could it be done?

A few things have changed since George and his troops crossed the Potomac.  Namely:

• Google
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Online Banking

So now it is possible to get everyone's input about practically every issue.  Most people are posting their input and ideas online anyway.  So why are we still sending 535 people to make decisions for all 300 million of us?  Why are we sending Johnny Representative or Jenny Senator off to Washington for years at a time and allowing them to make decisions that will shape our country's future without checking in with the rest of us except at election time?  And for heaven's sake, why are we putting up with the political bickering?

So how do we get from here to there?  An idea for change...

Form a new political party.  The core belief of the party would be "Give power back to the American People".  The core rule of the party is anyone the party elects to office must:

• Contact their constituents about any vote they have to make.
• Vote the way the majority of their constituents tell them.

The party would have a website to facilitate and enforce this.  The website would:

• Allow people to signup for party membership.
• Allow elected officials to post their upcoming votes to their constituents (members of the party).
• Allow constituents to vote for their elected officials' upcoming decisions.
• Track each elected official's decision, how their constituents voted, and how the official ended up voting.
• Allow party members to apply to run for office as a party representative for offices being targeted by the party.
• Allow primary elections to be held online to decide a single party candidate for each office being targeted by the party.  

So what would it change?

• No more lobbying.  What's the point, if the official is just going to vote the way their constituents tell them?  Maybe the lobbyists will start lobbying the constituents instead.
• Wealthy interests would also lose interest.  
• Power returns to the people.
• No more partisan bickering.  No more partisans.

What do you think?

Please post your thoughts and comments below.  If you have any interest in helping to start such a party, please send an email to politimorph@gmail.com.

Find out more

 Visit the home page to see links to other articles that give more details about this idea.