I have been invited to post a series of short commentaries on the Electoral Reform Act of 2012, a crowd-sourced outline that started in 2000 and was first developed over time by myself with Jim Turner (former #2 to Ralph Nader), Michael Cudahey (former top aid to Barry Goldwater), and Jock Gill (former communications specialist for Bill Clinton).
When Occupy came to my attention on 17 September 2012, I immediately took notice and quickly noticed that Electoral Reform was a key element of the US Day of Rage web page . I spoke about this to Russia Today TV, that got me a call from a US Day of Rage person, and that led to my briefing the Occupy NYC Electoral Reform Working Group in October, driving my trusty 1964 MGB with Soccer Mom letters (photo below, parked in front of the 60 Wall Street atrium used for meetings).
A video was made of me by someone else, speaking for six minutes, and then posted a couple of weeks later to YouTube. It made the front page of Reddit, and went small viral (30,000 main votes, at least a dozen copies).
That in turn -- and this is the important part -- caused a number of stakeholders in electoral reform to get in touch with me, and led to the crowd-sourcing of the Electoral Reform Act of 2012. Now at version 4.4, it started as 2.0. Below are the existing links at We the People Reform Coalition, where I have tried to create a "package" that could be used to mobilize a third-wave campaign--trans-partisan in nature--to trash the two-party tyranny in 2012.
….1 International Election Integrity Principles
….2 Occupy NYC Working Group on Electoral Reform
….4 Electoral Reform Statement of Demand
B STRATEGY, METHODS, ORGANIZATIONS
….1 Richard Winger on Electoral Reform Short-Cut
….2 Campaign Finance: Amendment or Law?
….3 Americans Elect: Manchurian Fraud or Redeemable Good Idea?
….5 Directory of Activist Individuals & Organizations (USA)
My individual discussions of each of the eleven elements are not at the above links, they will be unique to Independent Voter Network (IVN), less one consolidated document posted at BigBatUSA after all of the pieces have been posted.
Robert Steele is a former spy, honorary hacker, #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, a former small business CEO, and founder of Earth Intelligence Network, a 501c3 committed to creating public intelligence in the public interest. This is the first part in an ongoing multi-part series “Robert Steele on Electoral Reform”. The views expressed are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of IVN or IVN partners.
Series:
Part 9: Funding (Coming Soon)
Part 10: Legislation (Coming Soon)
Part 11: Constitutional Amendment (Coming Soon)
Part 12: The Stakeholders (Coming Soon)
Part 13: Overview of The Ethics (Coming Soon)
Part 14: Overview of The Action Plan (Coming Soon)
Part 15: The Pledge (Coming Soon)
Part 16: The Statement of Demand (Coming Soon)