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P-poll Now: monthly
update |
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February 18, 2008 (Presidents Day) |
Auroras
Voice is up and running
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Summary: January was AV's first
full month of activity. The fundraising card I sent out generated quite a bit
of response. It spawned questions, comments, funds, and some confusion. Since
then, I've invited a group of student activists to join me in Washington. I
have a radio interview scheduled for this week, and our website design
is complete. Now is a good time to share a little bit of the project's
history. |
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First,
some history
I've
been thinking about this since 2006. Sometime back then I realized that today's
technology created an opportunity for average citizens to have a voice in the process
of legislation. The consequence of this is that the people can become the
equals of lobbyists more or less. I thought it was important.
Eventually,
I got around to writing to my U.S. Representative. I asked him to sponsor a
bill that would require all U.S. Reps to poll their constituents on bills up
for a vote and publish the results. That was in March of 2007, about a year ago
now. I never heard from him.
So
late last year, sensing that this idea wasn't going anywhere, at least not
through the official channel, I decided to try to advance it on my own. The
first thing I did was tell you about it, and now you are involved. The next
thing we have to do is tell everybody else about it.
(Incidentally,
more recently, I tried writing my U.S. Rep again. This time I requested a
meeting to discuss this opportunity, either here locally or in Washington, D.C.
That was in January of this year. As of this writing, I have received no reply
to that message either.)
Public
radio interview
Last
summer, I started writing a book about this subject. It's called P-poll: are
you happy now?, and it discusses
the opportunity for average citizens to participate in the process of
legislation. Earlier this year, I put together a little show proposal to send
to media outlets, suggesting my book on the topic as a potential segment.
WXEL
90.7 FM, the local NPR affiliate, has a weekly news program called
"Florida Forum." After receiving my proposal, producer Denise Sears
invited me to be on the show. The tape date is Wednesday, February 20th; the
airdate has yet to be determined. The book is due out in March.
Florida
Forum has a good mix of local and global topics, blending social issues with
politics, so the P-poll vigil and book should be a good fit. I will let you
know how it went.
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Website
sighted Well, this page that
you're reading is obviously not it. This is a temporary fix for news and
such, hopefully a one-off. I am happy to report that the site's design is complete.
All that's left is the programming, and that will be done ASAP. In the
meantime, here is a sneak peek. |
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Fundraising
campaign results
The
card went out to about 90 people all told. Recipients were almost exclusively
friends and family. With no website and no history, I thought it best to hold
off on reaching out to any big name celebrities and organizations. That's about
to change.
To
date, the campaign has netted $3,000 in start-up funds. That's an average of
about $33 per person. Going into this thing, I had no idea what to expect, so I
think the results were great.
To
those of you who gave: thank you very much. Money talks and your support says a
lot. Others contributed in the form of expertise, referrals, and services.
Thanks to you too--you have been very helpful.
If
you haven't yet contributed, there is no time like the present. Funds in the
early stage are the key to spreading the message.
Wish
list
So
far, many wishes have been granted: A college friend has offered lodging at his
home near Washington. Another friend, owner of a local marketing company, did
some printing for us for free. My former business partner in Mexico and I are
bartering for the website hosting and programming.
So what else could we
possibly need? Well, a few things . . .
á IRS Form 1023 filing fee - $700 (this is for
tax-exempt status)
á List rental - $1,000 (for 5,000 names)
á Postage - $1,300 (for 5,000 postcards)
á Press release - $250
á Paper and ink - $50
To contribute, please make
your check payable to Auroras Voice and send to 521 Southridge Road, Delray
Beach, FL 33444-2229.
Question: Why keep
raising money? How much do you really need? With free lodging near D.C. and $3,000,
isn't that enough already?
Auroras Voice is a
charity. Education is our principal activity. The 40-day vigil planned for this
summer is a centerpiece of our campaign, definitely. But the goal of that act
is also education. So, while the cost of the vigil may not be high, the cost of
telling people about it is on the rise: the more people you want to know, the
higher the expenses go.
For
example, this opportunity/problem affects all adult U.S. citizens, so imagine
that you wanted to get in touch with each and every one of them. There are
around 250 million adult U.S. citizens. Well, that's a lot of people, so let's
say you want to communicate with half of them, counting on word of mouth to get
around to the other half. You're still talking about 125 million. At a dollar
apiece to reach, well you can do the math . . . (It's $125 million.)
Granted,
that is a very rough example, and I'm not saying that we need $125 million. So
how much do we really need right now? I don't know, not exactly. I do know we
have some administrative costs and need to do some test mailings. The numbers
listed above are the best I can do as of this writing.
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In
sum, most of the money raised (90%) has been spent/allocated to getting the message
out. That is the most important part of our work right now, and the most
expensive part. |
Fund allocation breakdown
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Democracy Matters students invited to vigil
Founded
by professional basketball player Adonal Foyle, Democracy
Matters works with college students to reduce the impact of private money
on politics and other pro-democracy reforms. As not-for-profit group based in
New York, Democracy Matters has chosen to work with college students because
they want to encourage the emergence of a new generation of reform-minded
leaders.
Democracy
Matters' specific goal is to clean up campaigns by requiring them to be
publicly funded. As they put it, "Politicians depend on huge sums of money
to run their campaigns and end up responding more to the concerns of wealthy
donors and special interests than they do to the concerns of voters."
After
hearing about this group, I got in touch with Joan Mandle, the executive
director. I asked her how we might be able to collaborate and she offered to distribute
information from Auroras Voice at her 8th annual summit meeting in February.
She had about 175 student attendees from colleges all across the country, most
of whom received a special invitation to the vigil this summer. That was last
week. As of today, we've had no takers, but it's still early--we'll see.
P.S.
Confusion / Clarification
In
case you are curious about some of the confusion around the P-poll or our
mission, here is an attempt at some clarification.
The
P-poll
P-poll,
just to be clear, is short for "legislative preference poll" or plain
old "preference poll" and it would only be about laws proposed in the
House of Representatives. It would be a way for U.S. Reps to take the pulse of
their districts. It would be the people's official opinion on bills that they,
our U.S. Reps, are supposed to be proposing for our benefit. It would not be a
mandate.
Misconception
no. 1: You don't have to go to Washington
At
least one person has asked, "Why do you have to go to Washington?"
The answer is, that's where the problem lies. Our U.S. Reps (there are 435 of
them) live and work there most of the summer. They have the power to write the
P-poll into law, and the one representing me doesn't answer his mail.
The
40-day vigil for the Digital Will of the People is planned as an attempt to
draw attention to the problem of citizen-representative disconnect. If people
don't know about it, it doesn't exist. Historically, the best way to draw
attention to an issue like this is as a witness, and that requires a little
demonstration in the old tradition of non-violent protest. This will be a show
of commitment.
Do
I have to go? No, not really. I don't have to do anything. But to be perceived
as truly caring, I have to do something. Writing a book, something else I am
doing, is fairly easy, and pretty passive really. Going to the Capitol and
trying to get the attention of the people who have the power to redress the
imbalance of power—that is a little bit harder. And that just happens to
be the right thing to do right now.
Misconception no. 2:
Pablo would manage the P-poll
The
greatest misconception about this opportunity is that I or some private group
would be doing the polling of constituents and publishing the results. That is wrong.
I would do it if I thought it would work but I doubt very much that it would.
For a national legislative preference poll to work at all, it has to be
official.
The
real goal is to require our U.S. Representatives by law to poll their
constituents via text messages or email and publish the results at www.house.gov. So the government should be doing the polling and
the publishing, both. And the polls should be simple yes-or-no votes about laws
that they propose. That's all.
Misconception no. 3:
The P-poll would make U.S. Reps unnecessary
Another
misconception, though not common, is that whatever the people say goes. In
other words, if there were a national preference poll about House bills
scheduled for a vote and the people were in favor of a particular bill, say
universal health care, then our reps would be bound to pass it. That would be
akin to rubber-stamping the people's opinion into law and then there would be
no need for an elected U.S. representative in between citizens and the laws.
We
definitely do not want that, as that would be too close to direct democracy and
that has always proved to be a disaster. As James Madison said, "such
[direct] democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention;
have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of
property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been
violent in their deaths." (The Federalist No. 10, November 23, 1787)
We
have a representative democracy and in fact it is working just fine. The only
problem is that the entities being represented are corporations and not average
citizens. We can address this imbalance by giving the people a voice in the
process of their own representation. We don't need to be writing and passing
the laws ourselves, but we should be able to see how we feel about them
overall.
Contact
/ contribution info
Auroras
Voice
521
Southridge Road
Delray
Beach, FL 33444-2229
561.901.3467