Want an Honest Government Of, By, and For We the 99%?
Here’s How.
I cannot stress this enough: whatever your issue, however righteous and important it might be, it will never get a fair hearing as things now stand.
The ONLY way any issue might receive a fair hearing is if we FIRST achieve Electoral Reform and restore integrity to our government.
Open Power Electoral Reform @ Phi Beta Iota (see latest posts)
NEW:
Open Power Electoral Reform 12 Point Act
Open Power Electoral Reform — CounterPunch Series
Robert David STEELE Vivas
Email: robert.david.steele.vivas AT google DOT com
Cell & Skype on request via email
SHORT URL THIS POST: http://tinyurl.com/OpenPower
SHORT URL ALL OPEN POWER POSTS: http://tinyurl.com/OpenPowerAll
ELECTORAL REFORM ELEMENTS
Context: Electoral Integrity is like a car that needs multiple pieces in order to be safe and effective. It needs a chassis, wheels, an engine, a fuel tank, fuel, roads to drive on, and various comforts (seats) and safety items (lights, wipers, airbags). Below are eight major pieces of Electoral Integrity that are absent in the USA today. We not only do not have a car that is safe and effective to drive, it is on fire, or as one author puts it, in Code Red condition. To achieve Electoral Reform, we need all eight of these reforms together.
NEW: Two more points have been added after discussion with Richard Winger: Universal Registration (with opt out), and Open Primaries.
We are fortunate to have some interest across the USA in expanding the debates, getting corporate money out of politics, and restoring integrity to how district lines are drawn. These are three of the twelve fundamental attributes of a completely democratic electoral system.
01 Universal Registration
• Opt-Out Option
• Prisoners Remain Voters
02 Free & Equal Ballot Access
03 Tightly-Drawn Districts
04 Free & Equal Public Funding
• Overturn CITIZENS UNITED
05 Free & Equal Media Access
06 Inclusive Debates
• Restore League of Women Voters
• Debates in Every State
• Cabinet Announced in Advance
• Cabinet-Level Debates
07 Open Primaries
08 Election Day Holiday
Visitors to Disabled
Free Public Transporation
09 Paper Ballots
Counted Publicly On Site
Military and Embassy Sites
Exit Poll Validation at all Sites
Mail/Internet Triple Validation
10 End Winner Take All Voting
Instant Run-Off or
Range, Concordent, Other
11 Legislative Process Integrity
End Party-Line Voting
All Legislation Published in Advance
No Secret Provisions
Process for Citizen Guidance to Representatives
12 Article V Constitutional Convention
• 1st Religion & Freedom of Expression
• 2nd Right to Bear Arms
• 12th Electoral College
• 14th Birthright
• 17th State Appointment of Senators
Funding Vision via BigBatUSA.org made into a non-partisan activist site:
ORIGINAL OPEN POWER PAGE
A new paradigm of leadership is not the solution to those [societal] problems. Rather, a postindustrial school of leadership will help people change the dominant paradigm governing their society, thereby empowering them to transform their society and, one hopes, solve some of these outstanding problems. (Joe Rost, 1993, p. 182)
Open Power /#ElectoralReform is how we ethically, legally, rapidly reboot America the Beautiful.
THE PROBLEM (Matt Taibbi in Griftopia):
What has taken place over the last generation is a highly complicated merger of crime and policy, of stealing and government. Far from taking care of the rest of us, the financial leaders of America and their political servants have seemingly reached the cynical conclusion that our society is not work saving and have taken on a new mission that involved not creating wealth for us all, but simply absconding with whatever wealth remains in our hollowed out economy. They don’t feed us, we feed them.
IMAGINE: An end to the two-party tyranny that has sold us all out to the 1%.
IMAGINE: An Electoral Reform Act of 2015 that the Independents, Libertarians, Greens, Constitution, Reform, and Working Families Parties could agree on, along with the labor unions, VotoLatino, NAACP, and so many others.
IMAGINE: An honest government with integrity restored to America the Beautiful.
IMAGINE: A Coalition Cabinet announced in advance of Election Day able to create a Balanced Budget the public approves of in advance of Election Day.
IMAGINE: Full employment and an end to all income taxes.
This page revised to focus only on Electoral Reform Act of 2015
INDEX OF OTHER OPEN POWER POSTS
Open Power: Electoral Reform Short Brief (4 Slides)
Open Power: The National Conversation on Electoral Reform, Honest Government, and Our Future
Open Power: Revolution Now! Non-Violently — for Electoral Reform Act of 2015 in Time for 2016
Open Power: A Notional Coalition Team to Force Electoral Reform in 2015 and Run for Reform in 2016
Open Power: Strategy for Public Victory
Open Power: Open Source Activist Tool-Kit
Open Power – #BigIdeas #ElectoralReform #OpenSource
Open Power #1 in Civics at Amazon
2012 We the People Reform Coalition: List of Electoral Reform Activist Organizations
VIDEOS
2015 Robert Steele with Max Kaiser (14 Minutes Start at 12:26)
2015 Robert Steele with Alex Jones (12 Minute Distillation)
2015 Robert Steele with Alex Jones (59 Minutes Commercial Free)
2015 Robert Steele in Portland (14 Minutes, Conversational)
2011 Robert Steele at Occupy (6 Minutes)
Original Essay with Book Reviews (2013)
Open Power: Democracy Lost & Found Essay, Book Review Blurbs and Links [Updated 3 MAR 2015]
Original Series at Independent Voter Network (2012)
INDEPENDENT VOTER NETWORK: Steele on Electoral Reform – 15 Part Series
The Book
OPEN POWER: Electoral Reform Act of 2015 – Open Source Activist Tool Kit
Review (Guest): OPEN POWER – Electoral Reform Act of 2015 – Open Source Activist Tool Kit
Simplified Concept/Electoral Reform
Tom Atlee, my mentor on Co-Intelligence since I discovered him in 2000, has suggested to me that I need to separate the simplified concept from all the complicated ideas I have collected from many others, and instead of presenting all those ideas, however much structure and distillation I might have added, focus instead on inviting all who might be interested to converge on the need for an electoral reform summit that might lead to a compelling public demand for the Electoral Reform Act of 2015, whatever form that might take. Tom's offering is here:
** Imagine an Electoral Reform Summit that you would love to participate in. What would it be like? **
It involves meeting face-to-face.
We can participate from where we live and work.
We can participate when and as we have time.
It focuses on using the dynamics of 2016 election season to have a real impact.
It takes whatever time is needed to get enough of us on board to have real impact together.
It involves experts and professional advocates of specific electoral reforms.
It involves diverse democracy activists interested in the general topic of electoral reform.
The focus is on learning – understanding what's going on and what's possible.
The focus is on participation, conversation, and co-creation.
The focus is on action.
Organizers present a thought-out proposal for our discussion and endorsement.
Organizers provide ways for us to co-create a proposal we all agree on.
There is lots of time, opportunity, and forums for networking and exploring collaboration.
There are opportunities for productive dialogue to explore underlying principles.
Summit forums are designed to generate collective agreement and action.
Speakers and materials are provided to educate us all about diverse reforms and initiatives.
Special attention is given to the involvement of racial, class, and gender diversity.
Special attention is given to diversity of perspective and ideology.
Work is done ahead of time to identify areas of agreement.
Special forums are offered for those of us willing to make serious commitments to Summit work.
There is good entertainment and aesthetics.
There is a lot of free time.
Etc.
STARTING POINT FOR A NATIONAL CONVERSATION:
ER 03 Electoral Reform Act of 2015
VIDEO 14 Minutes Steele in Portland (the original)
VIDEO 12 Minutes Steele on Alex Jones (distillation)
My hope and prayer is that if we are successful in 2015, we can in 2016:
a) Elect an Independent President (Angus King comes to mind) with a Vice President that complements his experience as Governor and Senator (Dennis Kucinich comes to mind) while all the other small party leaders — particularly Jill Stein and Gary Johnson — and selected notables such as Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, and Jesse Ventura join the Coalition Cabinet — by virtue of the Electoral Reform Act of 2015 made mandatory of all candidates for President in the general election — a Cabinet announced in advance.
b) Elect at least 10 Senators and 40 Representatives who are Independent, from an accredited small party (Constitution, Green, Libertarian, Reform) or an emerging new party (Justice, Working Families) such that Article 1 is once again honored by Congress and rooted in ethical evidence-based decision-support, not “pay as you go” legislation written by and for the 1%. By 2018 when Phase II kicks in, I would expect two thirds of Congress to be Independent or small party or Unaffiliated.
My email is robert.david.steele.vivas AT gmail DOT com. Below is the long original post.
Expanded Concept/Electoral Reform
This page started when I was honored with an opportunity to present a workshop at the Economics of Happiness Conference held in Portland, Oregon from 27 Feb to 1 Mar 2015. Produced by Helena Norberg-Hodge of Local Futures and organized by Victoria Clarke, this was a brilliant EVENT — click on EVENT to see the program and enjoy the videos and others materials being posted and of lasting value. This was indeed a world-changing conversational event; it has changed my life and presumably the lives of many others attending. The organizers have much to be proud of.
Official Blurb from Conference Web Site:
Open Power: Electoral Reform & the Open Source Toolkit The progressive world is fragmented across thousands of issues and even when agreed on a major issue, such as climate change, fragmented in behavior and consequently ineffective. There are two remedies for our public impotence, and both are converging in 2015. The first is Electoral Reform. The second is Public Empowerment with a free open source toolkit that makes possible information sharing and sense-making across all boundaries. The workshop will outline the specifics of the 2015 electoral reform campaign and the specifics of the new initiative to create a proactive public intelligence network. Recommended reading before attending: http://tinyurl.com/Steele-Reform.
Robert David Steele is a former spy, honorary hacker, #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction (reading in 98 categories), and a former candidate for president (Reform Party). He is the author of The Open- Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth and Trust. His recent profile in The Guardian has received 58,000 likes and put Open Source Everything into the meme pool. Learn more: www.robertdavidsteele.com
The Back Story
In 2008 I was so upset with the obvious fraud of the election that I wrote a book, free online, ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig. The chapters are also free online as individual readings:
Legitimate Grievances (US Internal)
Legitimate Grievances (Anti-US Global)
Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them
This quick study was useful to me as homework. I studied the candidates, the issues, the budget.
In 2011 we had Occupy and the Occupy Electoral Reform Working Group. Below is my six minute briefing to them that went viral after it made the front page of Reddit (copies proliferated):
They wiggled their fingers and did not listen and eventually between undercover cops and other influences, fell apart completely. So I ran for President, for six weeks, accepted by the Reform Party. My web site, We the People Reform Coalition, aggregating great ideas from others is still up, and what I learned is told at the link below — I had to run for President to learn that we have EIGHT accredited parties whose candidates for federal officer can be MANDATED on to every state ballot by federal law — a law the two-party tyranny has refused to pass nine times, the last four as sponsored by Ron Paul.
How I Tested the Boundaries of the Two-Party Tyranny
…and now back to the current situation.
Because of the EVENT, I decided to publish an Amazon KINDLE at Amazon based on my long-running BLOG post, “Democracy Lost” where I provide an essay, some graphics, and the documents I have created after aggregating the best ideas from many others and adding my own hard-earned perspective from 40 years in the belly of the beast and a concurrent 20 years hanging with hackers, collective intelligence and deliberative dialog gurus, and many others. I made a mistake in accepting the “exclusive” with DRM deal with Amazon — if you want a free ePub, send me email to robert.david.steele.vivas AT gmail DOT com and I will gift it to you, which does not violate my agreement. I will not make this mistake again, in the future I will go non-exclusive and also publish at SmashWords and NookPress. Use the BLOG and this post to get a sense for free of what is in the KINDLE — or email me for the 8MB free ePub.
The KINDLE, on sale for $2.99, was instantly in the top ten for Civics on the day it was released and has been hanging in the top 50 since then, often going back up to 2 or 3. I cannot stress enough that it is not “my” book but rather an aggregation of good ideas from many sources — it is a starting point for a national dialog that in my view must be undertaken in 2015 in order to impact on 2016.
YES WE CAN! This phrase, greatly dishonored by the hypocrisy and imperium that followed the election of its perhaps well-intentioned but soon captive Presidential candidate, applies to the most frequent comments I get when presenting these ideas.
Can we really do this?
I had no idea!*
*how many ways we are screwed out of our vote…
This latter has to do with the common misperception — Lawrence Lessig and others have this problem — that “getting money out of politics” will somehow make everything better. It will not. As long as the two-party tyranny (Theresa Amato's term in Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny) controls ballot access, 60% of us will be absolutely disengranchised, and the other 40% will be manipulated by the 42 billionaires that own the US Congress and the President.
What should jump out at you from the above chart is how easily We the People can out-spend the 42 billionaires. Combine our billion or two (at $10 a person, many will give more) with social media and unified instead of fragmented activism, and it is Game Over!
I was inspired by Paul Ray and Sherri Ruth Anderson's 2001 book, The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. My summary review is still the top review at Amazon, votes are most welcome. I skyped with Paul Ray yesterday, and he told me that the category known as Cultural Creatives in the USA is now up to 80 million (out of roughly 300 million total) and that they are characterized by two attributes: a) they are not mono-issue nor are they left or right — they are driven by values not ideologies and focus on multiple issues at a time; and b) the one thing that all networks, groups, and individuals can come together on — setting aside all disagreements over individual issues — is ELECTORAL REFORM.
I was also inspired by Howard Dean and Joe Trippi and Zephyr Teachout and their development of the BIG BAT concept. I engaged Joe Trippi to learn about this, and that concept is illustrated above and central to We the People Reform Coalition with the URL http://bigbatusa.org. There is no question in my mind but that if a few major social leaders such as Mark Zukerberg, Jackie Salit, and Joan Blades want to come together and enable us to unify on ELECTORAL REFORM, then it is Game Over! in 2015 and in 2016 we can aspire to:
a) Elect an Independent President (Angus King comes to mind)with a Vice President that complements his experience as Governor and Senator (Dennis Kucinich comes to mind) while all the other small party leaders — particularly Jill Stein and Gary Johnson — and selected notables such as Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, and Jesse Ventura join the Coalition Cabinet — by virtue of the Electoral Reform Act of 2015 made mandatory of all candidates for President in the general election — a Cabinet announced in advance.
b) Elect at least 10 Senators and 40 Representatives who are Independent, from an accredited small party (Constitution, Green, Libertarian, Reform) or an emerging new party (Justice, Working Families) such that Article 1 is once again honored by Congress and rooted in ethical evidence-based decision-support, not “pay as you go” legislation written by and for the 1%. By 2018 when Phase II kicks in, I would expect two thirds of Congress to be Independent or small party or Unaffiliated.
Below is the primary video from my Portland presentation, preceded by a 17-minute video of Eric Liu on public power, and followed by a one hour commercial-free video with Alex Jones and a video of Richard Wolff, whose Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism book I consider central to our discussion henceforth.
Eric Liu Sets the Stage — You DO Have the Power!
The Original Viral Video (Steele at Occupy, 6 Minutes)
Steele in Portland on Electoral Reform (14 Minutes)
Steele with Max Kaiser (Start at 12:26)
Steele on Alex Jones without Commercial (59 Minutes)
More YouTubes of Robert David Steele
More YouTubes of Richard Wolff
Summary and Core Documents
Part I of my concept, that is being shopped to small party leaders and potential donors from today, is a year-long effort broken up by an Electoral Reform Summit that brings together the disenfranchised political leaders and many others, to review the Occupy and We the People Reform Coalition specifics since refined into the below graphic:
Additional Readings:
ER 01 Electoral Reform Summit 1.5
ER 02 Statement of Demand (2015)
ER 03 Electoral Reform Act of 2015
ER 04 Electoral Integrity Pledge
ER 05 International Electoral Integrity Principles
ER 06 Draft Budget 2015
ER 07 Steele Story (How I Tested the Boundaries)
For Part II see Open Power: Open Source Activist Tool-Kit
Libertarians see Open Power: Libertarian Focus
Might you care to join this grass roots campaign to restore integrity to America the Beautiful and how it is governed?
On their present course, MoveOn and others are not going to make a difference in 2016 — as with the student movements in the 1960's, deliberately fragmented by the CIA and the foundations, the activists today are incoherent, unfocused, and not a serious national-level capability that can create the fear that is needed within the two-party duopoly.
Donations toward my expenses are gratefully accepted at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, contributions to Earth Intelligence Network are tax-deductable and receive an immediate receipt as well as begin an email dialog with me. I take no personal compensation from donations.
I am in the process of signing up some of those I mention above. If we hit critical mass and get the first $250K major donation, we will retain an accountant and lawyer skilled at satisfying the IRS and FEC, hire staff, and go for the whole enchilada — $500M and up.
IMAGINE: Ron Paul & Dennis Kucinich with a Coaltion Cabinet!
Or Angus King with Jill Stein or Chuck Hagel with Cynthia McKinney or John Kasich or Jon Huntsman with Elizabeth Warren — the possibilities for a winning COALITION (i.e. including Ralph Nader, Jesse Ventura and many others pre-appointed to the Cabinet) are infinite. NOW is the time to demand Electoral Reform, bury the two-party tyranny, and put We the People back into the business of self-governance.
Here are the four graphics I like, the first three are from Ray Paul, the political compass, and the last is from Michael Crane, as modified by myself with his permission. We can unify all — and restore integrity — if we focus together on the ONE THING we all agree on, the need to dump the two-party tyranny and come back to open power — self governance. Set the issues aside for now, focus on the existential threat — and the existential opportunity: #ElectoralReform.
Semper Fidelis,
Robert David STEELE Vivas
El Pueblo Avanca!
Additional Background
The Open Source Everything Manifesto
ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig
Profiles of Steele by Others
- Ahmed on Steele in The Guardian (2014)
- Myers on Steele in Reflexive Practice (2010)
- Kimery on Steele in Homeland Security Today (2009)
- Yankeelov on Steele in Year in Computers (2000)
- Toffler on Steele in War & Anti-War (1993)
DONATE, PLEASE!
I receive no compensation from donations to Earth Intelligence Network, an accredited 501c3. Your donations cover web costs, travel expenses not covered by donors, office costs such as ink cartridges and computer repairs (the occasional malware), and gas money. Beyond pin money, I believe that if we can raise $10K we can raise $100K, if we can raise $100K we can raise $1M, and if we can raise $1M we can raise $500M ($10 times 50 million “Cultural Creatives”). Do what you can and thank you.
