Political Changes are Possible this Year

The reason it is possible is that just 5 – 10% of us voting in concert could swing almost every Congressional seat up for grabs in the November election. Most races are decided by less than 5% of the total vote; therefore a few percent of us basing our votes on a single criterion could control the outcome of most congressional contests.

By differentiating between incumbent and challenger as a political movement just 5% of us basing our votes on the following criterion could make a significant difference Incumbancy

VOTE OUT INCUMBENTS VOI

If both candidates take special interest money vote for the challenger; i.e.

Those of us that see the need for change realize there is a power structure controlling our federal government for their own ends. Over 90% of Congressional candidates are returned to office every year. Whether one calls it the “elite,” “corporate control” or “the powers that be”, our political system is out of control and the only defense mechanism we have is our vote.

The system will certainly not change from within. Only a concerted effort on the part of the voters will provide the wake-up call. If we do nothing more than change the status quo of Congress we will have accomplished something; i.e. a new community. Our hope is that the newly elected members will realize they are there because of a voter movement and will then pay attention to their constituency.

A Vote Out the Incumbent (VOI) movement could accomplish this. Can you imagine 70% - 80% of the incumbent Congressmen not being returned to office this election year? That would be a message! We want our Republic back. We want our Congressmen working for us, not special interests.

The fact is money buys votes. Those whom we have elected to federal office and have taken special interest money to get elected betray us the moment they take the oath of office. The simple fact is that our election process operates on large amounts of money, used to influence the voter, the vast majority of which comes from large corporations buying political influence. This buying of legislation is now just business as usual in D.C. There are only a few members of Congress and certainly none in the executive branch that have the integrity to have resisted this legalized bribery. What we are left with is a government with power but little moral authority.

The people we would be kicking out are not all that great

Please e-mail this web page to your friends. Click "mail" and "send link" for Internet Explorer or "file" and "send page" or use the copy-paste process to send the text. If each of us would e-mail this page to two or three others we could get some exponential growth going and have an effect on Nov.2.

If we are ever to regain control of our political process it will necessarily have to be some single-minded concept that everyone can understand. I have thought long and hard about what would work and I have yet to find a more viable method than VOI. It is to do nothing more than the obvious. If we are dissatisfied with the status quo; throw the rascals out!

It makes little difference which party controls congress. If new members of our next congress realize they are there because enough of us have registered our disgust by following the VOI principle and will do it again in the next election, they might manage to pull their heads out.

We Americans no longer think of ourselves as the government but think of it as some uncontrollable entity that is beyond us, which it probably is. We know our government’s policies often do not represent popular opinion but exist to benefit a few. We know the two party system as now practiced does not provide significant choice. We have, in our national conscience, not yet fully identified what is wrong much less realized the depth of the problem. We certainly have not been offered a solution to the problem.

There is a specter haunting our Republic - The specter of a broken, out of control political system. A system so broken that in the world’s oldest constitutional democracy more than half of us are so frustrated, demoralized or indifferent that we do not bother to vote. Our electoral system is largely a self-contained cycle of elected representatives selling legislation to the highest bidder and using the proceeds to buy votes at election time. Lost in this cycle is the concept of equal representation and legislation designed to benefit the lives of us citizens, our country and sense of community.

Somewhere along our political time line we lost the sense of egalitarianism upon which this country was founded. We have allowed an elite to take over the Washington power structure for their own ends. This phenomenon has become so blatant and we so indifferent that we now have a corporate power strucure that is legally robbing the U.S. Treasury thru IRS codes and economic policy.

Equal representation means one man-one vote. Labor unions do not vote. Corporations do not vote. Religious groups do not vote. Only people vote. If we combine these obvious facts with the fact that it takes money to get elected it follows that this money should come only from individuals. Until we have the principal written into law: that a person running for public office may accept campaign contributions only from individuals and in limited amounts, we will not have equal representation.

The possibility of political change does inspire people to become active. Howard Dean’s attractiveness was largely that of someone willing to challenge the power structure. It defeated him. ( more realistically the DNC did) Those of us that want change need another means of expressing our frustrations.

Moneyed interests are holding the political issues most vital to our lives and our society hostage. At this point in the election, the politcos have the election process engrossed in trivia. For them to have a general or philosophical discussion of the above issues would mean offending the sources of their campaign funds. Lost in the process is the question of what is actually best for us and our Community.

Let's have a VOI movement and do something significant for ourselves on November 7th.

An interesting observation on the elite 537 of our ruling class

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