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Unity08.com
Have you seen this? What a great idea.
To begin busting up the dumb system we have for selecting presidents, a bipartisan group will open shop this week at Unity08.com. This Internet-based third party is spearheaded by three veterans of the antique 1976 campaign: Democrats Hamilton Jordan and Gerald Rafshoon helped get Jimmy Carter elected; Republican Doug Bailey did media for Gerald Ford before launching the political TIP SHEET Hotline. They are joined by the independent former governor of Maine, Angus King, and a collection of idealistic young people who are also tired of a nominating process that pulls the major party candidates to the extremes. Their hope: to get even a fraction of the 50 million who voted for the next American Idol to nominate a third-party candidate for president online and use this new army to get him or her on the ballot in all 50 states. The idea is to go viral—or die. “The worst thing that could happen would be for a bunch of old white guys like us to run this,” Jordan says.
5 Responses to “Unity08.com”
This is retarded.
If we were serious about election reform we would mandate publicly funded elections.
So what makes this retarded? Clearly we can’t enact actual election reform with the clowns we’ve been electing. Why would they change the system that benefits them so much? So it’s time to pull our candidates from a different source instead of relying on the corrupt idiots currently in control of things. I’m with you on publicly funded elections, and if that’s what you really want then you need to take a chance on an outsider who isn’t entrenched in the Washington political system.
I’m not sold on federal funds, I think it would further entrench the two parties who would get the lions share of the money. Setting up independent committees to draw up district boundaries or limiting the vectors of a district to 12 would make elections more competitive and elected officials less assured of their re-election.
Talcott, I suspect you’re right – no matter what we do now, big money buys politics.
Personally I’ve never thought the tiny details of how government operates are *that* important. If you really wanted to try improve the whole massive “thing” I think you’d have to totally restructure the incentive systems of governance. Something like the futarchy proposal might work (though not necessarily that).
In the meantime, as a here and now way of improving things, I’m really excited by the idea of a centrist party that elects its ticket online from within the other two parties before either of the two majors get their act together.
If you want to help coordinate all the stuff that’s obviously going to need coordinating there’s a website just gettign started for Supports of the Unity Party. It’s not affiliated with the founders. It’s more grassroots-ish. I know because I started it