We’ve had a blog visitor ask us to provide more information on the topic we are presenting. I’m more than happy to lay out a tentative plan on what we wish to achieve with Real Change In America.
Overall Mission Explained In More Depth
As for one example, numerous people we’ve come in contact with always refer to voting as picking the lesser of two evils. Politics have earned a bad reputation and we feel this SHOULD NOT be the case. We’re not looking to make an entire overhaul of the political system as it’s not built for such a sudden shift in how things are handled. We’re looking to work with what the current system can sustain to give the public more than the “lesser of two evils” choice. We’ve thought of a few possible solutions that would allow us to obtain this goal, and after our brainstorming sessions we concluded the best way would be national debates. Debates have a lower overhead than running some sort of full on campaign to give third-parties more exposure, they are completely unbiased, and allow for all candidates to share with the people how they feel about their agenda. Also, providing these debates on national television stations reach a large amount of voters that some sort of Internet movement could not.
Sponsoring a national televised debate is very costly and a large goal to shoot for, but it is our main objective. However, we are not going to bind ourselves to failure if we do not reach that primary goal. We have a number of secondary goals that we would like to accomplish as well and even those can get the ball moving in the proper direction. These secondary goals currently involve getting enough movement to convince the CPD to sponsor a debate, sponsoring a debate that may not reach national television but will be provided for free on the Internet (through media channels such as our website, YouTube, etc.), and just getting the public to look more into third-parties in general and help them get on the ballot in their states to give them a fairer chance.
Phase 1
The first phase of Real Change In America is to gain initial support for our ideas. We plan on this taking the bulk of our initial time and expect it to last into early 2010. We hope to achieve this by our social networking sites and our supporters. Word of mouth has been proven to be very powerful over the Internet.
Phase 2
Once the initial public support base in there (our foundation) we will start to get the message to the proper channels. Petitions to the CPD, possible donations if we decide to sponsor an internet feed debate (the donations would go only to paying the fees for bandwidth, debate space, filming costs, etc.). Phase two is expected to be completed by the end of 2010 or early 2011 at the latest.
The petition to the CPD would be within reason. We don’t expect them [CPD] to allow a third-party candidate to just be in a debate if they are only on the ballot in 1 or 2 states. We’re not exactly sure at this time what the entire criteria for a debate ready candidate would be, but we would flesh out or initial plans as we constantly remain in contact with out supporters, asking for opinions, thoughts, and ideas.
Phase 3
Depending on the responses from the CPD we will either let them run with the idea and work along side or start the physical work of our own sponsored debate. We would be hiring volunteers to help us collect debate questions, contacting campaign headquarters for all running candidates, finding the right location with our budget, and more. Some concepts of Phase 1 and Phase 2 will still continue in full swing as Phase 3 continues through 2011.
Phase 4
The fourth and final phase of our mission is to provide the debate to the public. This is a simple objective and we hope to have it completed in mid-2012 to allow time for the American people to watch and become informed of all the candidates. This may even give enough last minute support to get third-party candidates on more state ballots, allowing voters more of a choice come election day.
