Approval Voting Campaign

The first media release of Citizens for Approval Voting went out yesterday. Meanwhile I have been beefing up the operational side of the house including the member database and the various organizational mailing lists.

Dr. Robert J. Weber called this week to lend his support to our efforts. Dr. Weber coined the phrase "Approval Voting" in the 1970s after independently discovering many of the remarkable properties of this voting system. One of Dr. Weber's papers is linked on the left. (It is the third listed article entitled 'Approval Voting'.)

I have been working hard to get the new Americans for Approval Voting site up and running. Yes there are two sites now:

• Citizens for Approval Voting (CAV) and
• Americans for Approval Voting (AAV).

The CAV group is focused on education and outreach while the AAV organization is focused on lobbying and political action. This dual personality is a standard setup for political action groups that have to deal with IRS regulations about tax deductibility of donations.

Let me know of the new sites look OK or if they need some work in your opinion.

Thanks!

The Approval Voting work continues unabated. The major task at the moment is splitting off the new Americans for Approval Voting organization. The plan now is to have Citizens for Approval Voting operating as a tax exempt 501(c)(3) educational corporation and also have Americans for Approval Voting operating as a 501(c)(4) political action corporation.

Speaking of political action, I spent the morning at the state capitol in Austin lobbying for Approval Voting and other election reforms. The initial discussions went well and I have reason to believe that the first bill allowing Approval Voting in Texas may be filed in the next few weeks.

Look for the first press releases and other outreach to start going out later this week. While things remain hectic, there is no reason not to stir things up even more.

The organizational board meeting for this group occured on Monday. The only important change to the proposed Bylaws and organization was a new name: Citizens for Approval Voting. This change was suggested by Dr. Brams and is intended to allow non-Americans to feel comfortable using our website and resources for suggesting the use of Approval Voting in their own countries. (This change does not necessarily mean that the organization will become international in scope. The implications of that possibility are now under review.)

I got to meet some really neat people besides Dr. Brams in New York including Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News. Richard is a hero of mine due to his hard work and determination in developing his own niche in politics. He has been a true inspiration for my own decision to start this group.

I will be extremely busy in the days ahead now that the organization is real. There are lots of filings and paperwork still to handle. The exciting thing, however, is that I am now very close to being ready to announce the organization to the world at large. I can't wait!

I got great feedback on my color handout and so it is looking great for the convention. I also made up membership forms and other handouts. My speech has also been through several revisions and I'm ready for that too.

Don't expect any action on this blog till next Tuesday or Wednesday as I take on the Big Apple.

I just polished off the first draft of a handout touting Approval Voting. It is designed for possible use this weekend in New York. It is available to members of the ApprovalVoting Yahoo group.

Meanwhile I am happy to report that still more new contacts are responding including Neal McBurnett, creator of the Approval Voting Home Page which is apparently the first web page ever published on that subject.

The buzz about Approval Voting continues to build. More members and more dollars are showing up. Several more ringleaders in the Approval Voting movement have now joined. Also new activists within the Green Party have gotten involved.

Meanwhile I have completed the first draft of the Bylaws and the first official Board Meeting for AAV is slated for Monday afternoon. There is a lot to do before then...

Fellow Board member Steven Brams was in India last week where he happened to bump into Robert Weber of Northwestern University who is one of the independent inventors and key proponets of Approval Voting. Apparently Mr. Weber was pleased to find out that a group was forming. I think that it was Steven Wright who said "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it."

I will attending a one day conference in New York on Sunday, January 19th to further the agenda of Independent Texans. This includes introducing the attendees to Approval Voting. With luck I will be able to meet up with Dr. Steven Brams and get other AAV business done. If you know of other people that I should meet while in New York, please let me know.

I reserved ApprovalVoting.org to go along with the existing ApprovalVoting.com site. Soon the sites will be one and the same.

Progress continues. I had a great talk with Sam Merrill, author of Making Multicandidate Elections More Democratic. (See the link on the blogroll on the left.) Sam is willing to support AAV and also approves of the strategy and tactics that we are developing to deal with the IRV alternative.

I also had lunch with our resident voting systems expert, Rob LeGrand. Rob is gunning for a post grad position that would allow him to combine his interests in computer science and voting systems. He also is enthusiastically pursuing some other projects to support the Approval Voting movement. In particular he is creating an Approval Voting FAQ. Please send him your questions (with or without suggested answers.) Thanks again, Rob!

For jollies I set up the Approval Voting Store. It includes shirts and a coffee mug using a bad graphic that I put together. I really need some help from a good graphic artist for all sorts of purposes: store items, business stationary, websites, and more. Eventually I will raise significant funds for AAV so that I can hire a professional to do the job (or pay our volunteer to do even more work. Hint, hint!)

It is common for political groups with similar political aims to become bitter enemies if they support different tactics for achieving those common aims. This is because they perceive themselves as being in competition for the same set of hearts and minds.

In my experience, however, it is possible for such groups to open a dialog and discover ways to work together. The liklihood is excellent that they can do so as long as the leaders remember the old saw about "a hoise divided" and work diligently to communicate to their membership that there is a plan for cooperation.

So I am developing a plan for cooperating with the IRV movement, which only seems right given that their movement is developing some traction while Approval Voting is currently just a blip on the radar screen. This plan includes having the Approval Voting movement act as a foil for the IRV movement to help develop controversy about voting systems. (The media loves controversy.)

Additionally we may be able to develop a joint strategy whereby each movement targets a different set of states for enactment of voting system reform. This harkens back to the days when the U.S. percieved itself as 50 different experiments in democracy and best practices proliferated based on experiences in individual states.

BTW, my contact list is expanding and replies are slowly arriving. All of the replies are quite positive thus far. Today I meet with Rob LeGrand for lunch and work on the incorporation papers.

I continue to find and contact more authors and dignitaries who have written about Approval Voting in the past. For example, 1986 Nobel Chemistry co-winner Dudley R. Herschbach of Harvard co-wrote an editorial with Steven J. Brams for the May 2001 issue of Science Magazine. (Sadly the link requires a subscription to the Science website, but I asked Science Magazine to grant me linking priviledges and reprint rights. I expect that to be granted without any serious problems.)

I obtained a Tax ID number for the organization and expect to have our first items for sale available shortly. Artists should contact me about creating additional graphics that can be used for AAV logo items.

I got contacted by a local IRV supporter and we had a constructive discussion. Part of my plan is to develop a friendly rivalry with key IRV leaders so that we can use each other as foils to gain publicity while both attacking the current braindead plurality voting system.

I fixed up the appearance of this weblog a bit with the help of Phillip Pearson, creator of bzero. I'll be sticking with bzero for the time being. Thanks Phillip!