My Political Saga Continues...

I didn't want to burden everyone on our Holiday Letter list with too much politics, but here's an addendum for those who might be interested in learning more about how that has once more become an important part of my life.

As I wrote in a "self-introduction" to several groups over the past few months, I worked on Presidential and Congressional campaigns in the 1960's, while I taught quantitative methods for historical research, history of Congress, and a seminar on political campaigning at Yale. Shortly after I moved to UC Berkeley's Survey Resarch Center in 1974, I began a 30-year sabbatical from electoral politics for the sake of my new family. One of the primary reasons I decided to retire early from LBL in June 2003 was so I could get back into politics and try to help defeat George Bush and his Congressional supporters in the 2004 national elections.

In July, 2003, shortly after my retirement, Kathy and I visited Washington, DC, where I began renewing and making new political connections. I met with friends and some very interesting, helpful, and generous people at the "3DCC's" (Democratic National, Senatorial, and Congressional Campaign Committees), as well as Roger Hickey at the Campaign for America's Future, Mo Steinbruner at the Center for National Policy, and Bill Drayton at the Ashoka Society. Back in California I began working with Joan Blades and Wes Boyd at MoveOn.org, and continued broadening my contacts via email and telephone conversations.

I also learned about non-partisan efforts to provide voter information, which have become very impressive, but are still woefully unknown and unused by most voters. For example, take a look at the following:

In September, 2003 I worked with MoveOn.org and state groups opposed to the California Governor's recall -- an ultimately unsucessful, but nevertheless instructive exercise. Among other things, I helped design and implement a software tool that enabled people to entering their zip code on a web form and get a printable (pdf file) absentee ballot request form pre-addressed to their local Registrar of Voters.

Following the Yale Russian Chorus concert in late October I returned to Washington, DC, where a friend suggested that if I didn't want to relocate, I should consider working for one of the Presidential campaigns in California. Since my primary interests were grass-roots volunteer organization and application of computer technology, she suggested that Howard Dean's campaign was the obvious choice. She pointed out that regardless of the candidate, rapidly changing Presidential campaigns offer a lot more varied, intense experience and entrepreneurial opportunities than permanent organizations, "... and besides, they're more FUN!" That last point turned on a lightbulb for me; I had been so intent on ousting George Bush and his supporters that I had forgotten that this work could also be fun -- as it had been over thirty years ago. So I changed my ticket to return to Oakland a day early, where I saw Governor Dean in person -- at a rally for Latinos and union members followed by a large $100/person reception. The Governor was much more impressive in person than on TV, and I soon was helping set up yet another web/email newsgroup to bring together computer people working on various projects for the Dean campaign.

Soon I was happily up to my eyeballs in helping organize people, data, and software for the Dean campaign, which was an incredible phenomenon. When the Dean campaign imploded after the early 2004 primaries, I continued working on political software like Advokit, helping spread the word about web services like OrchidSuites, and working on non-partisan causes like voter registration and protecting the integrity of the voting process, as well as trying to assist the Democratic Presidential, Senatorial, and Congressional Campaigns in various ways.

Last July, after spending a few weeks helping friends in the League of Women Voters rescind the League's uncritical endorsement of electronic voting without a voter verified paper audit trail -- at the League's biennial convention -- I became acquainted with Will Doherty and the Verified Voting Foundation. After volunteering to help prepare the agenda for launching a software development effort to support national election protection (EP) activities, I soon found myself chairing daily teleconference calls and eventually project manager for the Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS). EIRS helped EP partners enter over 30,000 reports from individual citizens and EP pollwatchers and lawyers. Remarkably, EIRS functioned throughout November 2-4, albeit sometimes very slowly! You can see the results of our efforts at http://voteprotect.org/

Like many others, I have been deeply troubled by the profound changes the Bush administration continues to make in our national government's relations with the rest of the world, the environment, and our own states and citizens. But the primary campaigns let us turn that negative energy into an incredibly positive force for profound and lasting change in American political life. I sensed there was something happening in America that is larger than any one candidate. Millions of people are beginning to participate in politics via the internet. Thousands of daily conversations are going on over the internet about how to remake democracy using the decentralized power of the web and open source software. For example, one such conversation that recently got started on a group that I helped put together is summarized at http://www.greaterdemocracy.org/mt/archives/000016.html#more. People also are beginning to answer the old domination of politics by big-money and television advertising by using computers and the internet to raise large sums of small contributions and even create their own advertising (e.g., see http://www.bushin30seconds.org/

At the same time, the historian in me despairs that our country is likely to become even more polarized for at least the next few election cycles. Unfortunately, computers have made it all too easy for legislators to draw district boundaries that produce safe constituencies for the most rabid partisans, which in turn makes compromise and moderation more and more difficult to achieve and maintain. And computers with the media are making it ever easier to just tune in to your own pre-existing point of view.

If you'd like to join me in any of the partisan or non-partisan activities I've mentioned, I'd be delighted to help you do so. Just send me email outlining what you might like to do, and I'll be glad to suggest some possibilities.

Needless to say, the results of this year's national elections were depressing. I'd like to hear what friends and colleagues think about what happened in the 2004 elections, and hope we can continue the dialog over the course of the year.

A Dios,

-John