Petition to Sponsor the Construction of a Voting Advice Network

Well, I tried. I am 100% certain that a voting advice system will create a network of voters and advice-givers that makes money irrelevant to politics. (That idea is explained fully at CitizensAdvisory.org)

I figured, if I could get that idea in front of the White House then, in the ideal world, they might say--Hey, that's the right thing to do. Let's give you a job with the charter to make that happen!

That would be wonderful, of course. Or they might find someone else to do it. But at the very least, it might get a few people thinking. And the more people who are thinking along these lines, the better. (It doesn't matter who does it. It only matters that it gets done!)

So when I saw an opportunity to put a petition in front of the White House, I took it. It is (or was) here. Here is the text:
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To make money IRRELEVANT to elections, EMPOWER INDEPENDENTS, and END the DOMINANCE of SPECIAL INTERESTS, we need to establish a national Voting Advice Network, harnessing the power of social media to give citizens voting advice (only) from organizations and analysts they TRUST--easily and conveniently.

Because citizens receive advice only after subscribing to an analyst's "feed", they never receive unsolicited communications. But they always receive ALL advice from those they trust. And because advice that doesn't matched their ballot choices is ignored, they are never spammed with recommendations they don't care about, and can't act on.

With this system, independents will be empowered with information from trusted sources, ending the era of expensive ads and "sound bite" politics.
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All it needed was 25,000 signatures, and the White House would have responded. At least, the idea would have been in front of them. So I sent a message out to about 30 of my closest friends, and then posted the link on Twitter and Facebook.

I figured I might not get to 25,000 in a month (the threshold for a response). But I figured I might at least get to 5,000 (the previous threshold). At least, I expected to get the 150 signatures that would make it visible to the public. Then, who knows what might happen?

Well, apparently the need to create a login ID was too big a barrier. Or people just never told their friends. Somehow, as apparent as it is to me that the "network effect" of a voting advice system will make money irrelevant to elections, it just the very rare person that "gets it". Either they don't believe it would work, or even if it would work, they don't believe it would happen.

So in the end, I amassed all of 5 (count 'em, 5!) signatures. I'm grateful to those who signed. But it's pretty clear that the "vision thing" is an impediment. Until I have the time and energy to create the system, and people see it working, people just don't seem to understand it or be willing to believe in it.

Unfortunately, even after it is created, it will take time for it to "go viral". Like any new social networking application, the value is in the numbers. In other words, the payoff for adopting it is in direct proportion to the number of people who are already using it. Once the "tipping point" is reached, it becomes self sustaining, of course. But that is a process that takes time, and the clock only starts when the app is available!