A Proposal for Election REFORM by Coordinated State Ballot Initiatives

Dear Friends and Activists,

We all worked enormously hard this election for the most progressive candidates
we could find, and we had a couple winners.  In addition, Ciro Rodriguez is in
an upcoming runoff in TX-23 with very excellent prospects.  In truth we probably
had even more winners but for the election shenanigans we knew would be a
handicap and which certainly took place.  But the good news is that in spite of
them, and thanks to your valiant participation, the people have regained both
the House and the Senate.  This at least allows us the power and opportunity to
fight another day, and it is critically important that we continue to speak out
in ever increasing numbers now that we have majorities who are more likely to
influenced.

In the meantime, we have put a lot of thought into the next major strategic
move.  There will be bills in Congress to attempt real election reform, but
there is no assurance that anything of substantive impact can survive a veto,
assuming we can even pressure its passage.  Therefore, we propose opening up a
collateral front by putting together as many state ballot initiative campaigns
as possible where laws can be passed directly on to the books.  What we have in
mind are two separate propositions in each such state, with the idea that there
is synergy in collecting signatures for two related initiatives at the same
time.

1) A paper ballot initiative of some kind

2) A clean money campaign financing measure

PAPER BALLOT REFERENDUM:  http://www.usalone.com/paper_ballots.php

Critical to the success of these initiatives will be to establish a consensus of
what we should shoot for, and to get everyone on the same page up front, so to
speak.  We recognize that with the question of paper ballots there are two camps
who so far have been working perhaps at cross purposes.  Some support H.R. 550
as an attempt to add on some kind of afterthought accountability to the existing
electronic voting machines.  Some others strongly oppose any variation of that
bill because it doesn't go far enough, and are pushing for total elimination of
the infernal Accu-Hack machines with their secret proprietary software.

What we are asking you, our participants, to do is to weigh in on what direction
you think we should go in.  We have set up a special referendum page where we
ask if there should be mandatory paper ballots in all elections.  Especially if
you are one of the movers and shakers in the election protection movement,
please email us so we can engage you in the drafting of the actual proposed
initiatives.

PAPER BALLOT REFERENDUM:  http://www.usalone.com/paper_ballots.php

While it is true that such initiatives cannot be pursued in all states, among
the many where they can are most of the key presidential swing states.  And by
passing parallel state propositions where we can, we would hope to build a de
facto national standard, adding to the momentum for federal legislation, as in
the recent spate of minimum wage increase intiatives, all of which succeeded.

With regards to clean money legislation, initiatives have been successful in AZ
and ME already, although limited to state office candidates only.  We think we
would like to see some kind of help for federal candidates from state voters
while we are working also to pass federal legislation.  The recent measure in CA
failed in large part because its supporters did not have the support of most of
the unions for whatever reason, with the nurses association alone responsible
for most of the votes it did get.

We are very interested in taking another shot at CA in particular with an
initiative to public finance political campaigns for candidates, attempting to
craft a measure that more people on our side can get behind, and as above to
spark plug parallel initiatives in as many other states as possible where that
can be done.  So again, if you are an interested think tanker in the clean money
movement, please email us so we can welcome you on to the team.

We would like to thank each and every one of you again and again for your
magnificent and generous contributions, without which some of the candidates we
were helping would have had no campaigns at all.  And these same former and
future candidates will be playing a key role in signature gathering for these
upcoming state initiatives as they develop.  We have moved the ball down the
field and we are not going back.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be
ours.

To be added to the list go to http://www.usalone.com/in.htm


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