America Vote Direct

Greetings,

It is with great pleasure and a sense of momentous excitement that I welcome you to America Vote Direct.

Last year, I created Nevada Vote Direct, the technological engine of my own congressional campaign during the 2006 election cycle. It introduced my invention, the Decision Management System [DMS]™, to demonstrate how citizens can CONTROL the votes of their Representative in Congress.

The idea of the congressional DMS is as new as digital electronics, and as old as civilization itself. It is based first of all on the premise, established at least as early as the Greeks, that society exists for the sake of the citizens, not citizens for society. In other words, it is an idea couched securely within the time-honored tradition of democratic political thought, and with specific reference to established and successful systems of direct democracy like that of the New England Town Meeting; expanding its geographical scope to the level of the congressional district.

In political science "direct democracy" is, we should note, the technical term that describes any system in which the citizens vote on all major government decisions. But it wasn’t in fact necessary to use the term "direct democracy" in any of my interviews or speeches during the campaign. People understood what it meant for them in practical terms as citizens without reference to abstract academic considerations of any kind whatsoever. Indeed, in my judgment, such terms only serve to stimulate endless and aimless theoretical chatter. I am not a scholar, nor a professor. Theory is, it happens, as interesting to me as to any other man; but our dire political reality compels me to be more interested in practice. Why allow theoretical quibbling (say, for example over shallow and tendentious distinctions between "republic" and "democracy" so tediously bruited about these days) to disturb and disrupt the much more important practical project of retrieving our American democracy, whatever it be called and however it be categorized, from the clutches of the dread death-angel of corruption that presently holds it firm? If we cannot do this with theory, we shall have to do it without. Therefore, I discouraged the jargon of philosophical speculation throughout the course of the campaign, and I can assure you that this was never to the detriment of purpose or progress. This restraint did not hinder communication but on the contrary made it more penetrating.

Nevada Vote Direct, and now America Vote Direct, must be understood in its proper context: nothing other than the terminally morbid present condition of our real American democracy such as it is – not the theory of it, but its concrete living reality. I addressed myself to the precipitous decline of our democratic institutions, mercilessly hollowed out by untouchable political corruption. The proper context is not an academic political text, positing an artificial and unhistorical opposition between a republic and a democracy. The proper context is a very untheoretical political lie whose universal currency, and the academic posturing that funds it, does nothing to make it credible to anybody. This lie is the simple proposition that our current government is representative of the will of the people, which in fact IS the fundamental principle of our form of government. Yet, today, our too real political status quo is in this respect but a farce and sham, an empty shell of a democracy or republic however defined.

Thus, I assert that the system proposed by America Vote Direct is an alternative, not to the completely theoretical system of representative democracy that is implicated in our national Constitution, but to our actual living reality in which representation is strictly reserved for a few wealthy and well-connected, often diabolical, special interests.

In an editorial about my campaign in the Los Angeles Times, it was claimed that our system is one in which good and honest people are elected to represent us because they are better informed and more sensible than you and I. How dismayed I was to be the ostensible excuse for the elaboration of such breathtakingly imaginative editorial nonsense.

But who can believe such childish twaddle? And who can calculate the folly and shame of printing it for wide eyes shut in that tremulous and so seemingly decisive electoral year 2006. We should gape in wonder at the spectacle of such a bald and pretentious falsehood in the considered opinion inches of one of the nation’s flagship newspapers. And at such a time! Not often has the peril to the nation been greater. And let’s remember from whence this peril comes. It comes precisely from the patent fact, known if not acknowledged by all, that our system is one in which corrupt conspirators with mountains of illicit campaign money manage covertly to effect the public election of a bungling host of nefarious malefactors and crooked demagogues.

Los Angeles Times, "Smoke on your pipe and put that in!"*

What the Times might have said is that as a matter of practical expediency in the real world Nevada Vote Direct proposed to use new technology to cut off political corruption at the source, and thereby to restore true constitutional representation as the ultimate guarantor of the people’s sovereignty. What lobbyist will even attempt to buy the vote of the congressional representative who is committed with this system to vote exactly as directed by the majority of registered constituents? The essence is sweet. How and why did the Times miss it entirely?

For this was the idea in a nutshell: Nevada Vote Direct promoted the use of new technology in order to restore democracy. Had I been elected, citizens in Nevada’s Second District would have been provided with a system for direct CONTROL over the votes of their representative in Washington.

The supporters of Nevada Vote Direct and my campaign were extremely gratified, despite my electoral defeat, to know that we had introduced a new idea into the political discourse of the nation. [For a full report on that campaign, please click here.] Now we are organizing America Vote Direct to promote this idea on a larger scale - and more importantly, to elect candidates committed to our pledge of citizen control.

America Vote Direct is designed as the coordinating agency of various soon-to-be established state divisions – such as Colorado Vote Direct, Florida Vote Direct, Oregon Vote Direct, etc. We hope to have a candidate in every state.

America Vote Direct will further the development of the Decision Management System that I designed for my campaign at Nevada Vote Direct, and provide it to qualified candidates free of charge, customized for each individual candidate’s district. Each DMS will be owned and controlled by the eligible voters of the district.

But make no mistake. We can succeed in this effort only if many citizens take up the call, either as candidates or supporters. We need YOU to spread the word about America Vote Direct, or as we say, "Pass It On!"

Our present system of uncontrolled representation is an absolute guarantee of political corruption. And so, it is inappropriate for us to blame politicians for the sorry state of our democratic republic. The fault lies in ourselves so long as we continue to pretend otherwise. It is in our power to control our representatives. We can have honest, sensible, and responsive government if we are determined to have it.

Help us to restore democracy to this sorely suffering nation. We were bequeathed a government of, by, and for the people. But it is up to us if we are truly to have it.

Sincerely,
Daniel Rosen
Heavenly Valley, Lake Tahoe, Nevada

* Anita, in West Side Story. (return)