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Nevada Vote Direct was the technological engine of a historic congressional campaign during the 2006 election cycle. It used new technology to expand the practical scope of traditional direct democracy - that is to say, beyond the physical (geographical) limits of the New England Town Meeting. The idea had been one of my constant preoccupations since the very first day that I learned about the Internet in 1990. Indeed, from the beginning, the idea of the Internet itself seemed to me inseparable from the idea of democracy. In some respects, were they not "virtually" the same idea?

As the years passed I marveled at the fact that no real political software was being designed by others to demonstrate the practical implications of this idea. How could such an obvious application be so steadfastly ignored in a world hungry for applications of all sorts? One could speculate, but the point is that I for one could not ignore it. I came back to it in my mind time and time again, much as one bothers a chipped tooth with the tongue. But it was more than just a wonder and bother. I felt that, since others didn’t, I was duty bound to do something about it.

And so, I decided to undertake the challenge of designing Nevada Vote Direct, a fully operational system for citizen control of a congressional representative; and I committed myself to a congressional campaign associated with it. (In practical terms, I designed but one particular embodiment of what may be more generally defined as a Decision Management System [DMS]. And the implementation of that DMS at Nevada Vote Direct was the unique premise of my campaign. For more information on the DMS, please see Vox Populi Systems.)

I’m sure that no other project or venture in my life generated a deeper sense of personal responsibility for the outcome. For, a new idea of any kind is a sacred trust. Thus, I had a constant worry as the bearer of a new political idea. The burden of proof rested on me. It wouldn’t do to present just a sketch of what I had in mind. I once knew a cynical but knowing man, who said, "Never show a fool half-finished work." Wise.

But only a fool expects a half-baked idea to be taken seriously by others. I couldn’t fail to present the idea in a suitable form, or my efforts might cast a shadow on its future prospects altogether. Thus, in September of 2005, I set aside my personal business, and for the next thirteen months devoted all of my time and energy to the development Nevada Vote Direct and the promotion of my campaign.

Friends and supporters have asked what I think about the results, considering the fact that I was not elected. Hence this report. It’s true, after the election I thought I might abstain from assessment and judgment, singing a song about my love for the wiggly question mark, my hate for the one-dimensional exclamation point. But the supporters of my campaign are as concerned as I am to assess the results, not for personal reasons, but precisely because an idea was at stake in this campaign. And so, now that the campaign is over, I feel obliged to make an account of it to the many people who supported me and cared about the outcome.

During the campaign, I constantly searched for the proper context in which to present the idea of Nevada Vote Direct, for the most succinct phrasing, for the most inclusive conceptualization within the constraints of the customary electoral process. This process does not begin to provide sufficient space for thoughtful deliberation in any case, but it is a decidedly narrow space for a new idea that is both unfamiliar and possibly threatening to some people. Just try to explain Nevada Vote Direct in two minutes, the time that one is usually granted at candidate forums to explain who you are and why you are running. Or try putting the idea in a nutshell on a four-by-six card. Fortunately, as I went along, and listened closely to people’s questions and concerns, I became better able to sketch the nature of the idea and its implications. My campaign helped me boil the idea down to an essence, so that now in this report I feel somewhat better able to define the most salient points, which I do here for the record.

The idea 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 systems of direct democracy like that of the New England Town Meeting.

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. And you may be interested to know that Nevada Vote Direct actually began as Nevada Direct Democracy. But I found out that the name had conjured fears of a far left-wing conspiracy in the mind of the first person who viewed the home page (an extremely intelligent woman who, however relevant this may be, happens also incongruously to be a regular viewer of Fox’s loathsome "Life of O’Reilly"). And so, I changed the name.

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. Such terms only serve, in my judgment, 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.

This, then, is the 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 of Nevada Vote Direct 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. The proper context is the farce and sham of our too real political status quo, which is an empty shell of a democracy or republic however defined.

More to the point, I assert that the system proposed by Nevada 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 proposes 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. The essence is sweet. How and why did they miss it entirely?

For that is the idea in a nutshell: Nevada Vote Direct promotes 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. What could be simpler, even for the Times? I shall have more to say about the select few who failed to understand.

The structure of Nevada Vote Direct and its operational rules and procedures are explained at the site [NevadaVoteDirect.org]. Suffice to say here that the system is secure and comprehensive, involving a weighting of lesser and greater majorities in a range of voting options on questions including but not limited to specific legislation - e.g. general issues, rules, procedures. It provides utilities for communication, education, and discussion as well. To ensure fairness, the system observes traditional standards: specifically, "Robert’s Rules of Order" as revised for "meetings" in virtual space and time on the Internet. Finally, the system is fully owned and controlled by the members, and membership is free.

It is worth taking some trouble to emphasize the last point regarding ownership. Nevada Vote Direct was designed as an instrumental organ of the popular will, and therefore it had to belong to the people unconditionally. For, as the will of the people changes through time, it is only natural that the system should itself be changed in accordance with people’s evolving needs.

To give just one example: the citizens of the Second District might conceivably desire, and so stipulate as follows: in the event of an act of terrorism that renders the system inoperable, and the simultaneous introduction of emergency legislation in Washington, the representative shall in that case be empowered to vote in Congress as seems to him, and to him alone, both wise and proper.

In other words, and this is the crucial point, the system at Nevada Vote Direct empowers the members to decide what its rules should be and how they should be changed over time. The implications of this fundamental fact seemed utterly obvious to me, but I learned to make them plain.

Thus, I remember being dumbfounded during one particular candidate forum when one of my fellow candidates in the race publicly expressed a rather peculiar reservation about Nevada Vote Direct. It was also the only comment about Nevada Vote Direct that I was ever to hear from any one of the candidates in my race, although we met often at candidate forums and talked together very cordially.

This particular candidate’s comment was as follows: "My only problem with Dan’s idea is… well, what if there is some particular legislation and nobody in the district votes on it?"

Stumped!

What does the question suggest coming as it does from a man who seeks our trust to think through many problems that are a good deal more daunting? I’d been so very curious to learn how people who have political power in our present status quo would receive the idea of Nevada Vote Direct. Alas, the mountain labored and brought forth a mouse.

In fact, there are many votes in Congress that few citizens if any would be motivated to vote on. And it is possible to envision a variety of circumstances in which it might be wise to give the representative personal authority to decide a vote in Congress (i.e., without consulting the voters). It would probably be wise, for example, to rule out citizen control of the representative’s votes in congressional committees. But I can formulate only provisional rules with respect to these matters. Unlike our President, I am not and would not be "the decider."

In 2005, a total of 657 questions were decided on the floor of the House of Representatives. (Not "hundreds of votes every day" as a derogatory aide to our former representative in Congress disingenuously claimed during a television panel discussion about Nevada Vote Direct.) Most of those 657 votes – being merely procedural (or ornamental, as when solemn resolutions proclaim our national goodness and greatness) - would have been of no concern to me as a citizen, and I doubt they would have been of any concern to others in my district. In any case, had I been elected, I would have worked closely with my constituents to determine where the lines should be drawn. As I always say, "Let the people decide."

The questions and concerns about Nevada Vote Direct that were raised during the campaign fell into two broad categories. The first of these was the category of practical considerations. Is the system truly secure? Will it be fair? Just one person, one vote? What about people without computers? Will it be manipulated by minorities? And so on.

Early on, I began to say, "Practical problems have practical solutions." As it happened, in the beginning I had not thought through all of these questions and concerns, and so I worked very hard as we went along to come up with practical solutions when real problems became apparent. I often had excellent advice from supporters and members, and some of the rules and procedures of Nevada Vote Direct were changed accordingly.

In some instances, the practical concerns, and their solutions at Nevada Vote Direct, provided a very interesting new perspective on problems that are of more general concern in our present political circumstances. For example, unlike the voting systems used by our government in our periodic elections, the electronic voting system at Nevada Vote Direct is based on open source software that is available for inspection by anybody at anytime. More importantly, it involves balloting that would usually extend over considerable periods of time (even months and years). Thus, any hacking of the system may easily be detected in a timely fashion; and since the system is transparent, while still protecting confidentiality, it may be detected by the citizens themselves who are always in a position to verify that their votes have been tabulated correctly. And, when hacking is detected, the accumulating results may be restored without loss of more than a few hours of voting. Therefore, the formulation and structure of the system substantially nugifies all of the issues that arise with biennial one-day affairs conducted by questionable proprietary administrators like Diebold.

In short, security is a problem solved for Nevada Vote Direct. It’s voting system is as secure as it needs to be in order to produce the desired result, which is an objective measure of the people’s will.

But the main thing to report with regard to practical considerations is that Nevada Vote Direct has by now been subjected to a lengthy process of very pertinent criticism and review across the full spectrum of relevant concerns and issues. With respect to practical concerns, they have been successfully addressed within the specific design of the system. Therefore, I’m now reasonably confident that every substantial issue that it is possible to anticipate of a practical nature has been dealt with appropriately. The significance of this fact is very great. It means that, with all of these problems confronted and resolved, the system at Nevada Vote Direct is demonstrably viable and practical. No coherent objection of a practical nature can be leveled against it.

The second category involves concerns of a more general, indeed inevitably theoretical, nature. Altogether, they question the wisdom of investing greater powers in the broad citizenry of the nation. Although having already expressed my impatience with theory, I nonetheless now would like to say something on this score .

I admit that in the beginning I simply assumed the propriety and practicality of direct democracy – almost as a kind of axiom. And, as I’ve already said, but it bears repeating, I regard the customary formulation of the theoretical question as fundamentally flawed because its real context is ordinarily ignored. Again, the proper question involves the greater or lesser competence of popular power as compared with the power of an ignorant and adolescent elite of corrupt corporate stooges. In this matter as in all matters, we are reminded of the first and paramount question of all philosophy: "Compared to what?"

It certainly seems to me that the undisputed success of the New England Town Meeting proves the point as well as it can be – case closed. So that, only remaining question concerns the proper geographical and demographic scope of any direct democracy – a question that is now forever altered, and substantially resolved, by the technology that I have devised at Nevada Vote Direct.

Beyond this, however, we should note that quite a lot of research in fact supports the claim that experts actually have a lesser degree of success in predicting and planning for the future than ordinary citizens. Claims of a positive nature can in fact be made for "The Wisdom of Crowds" (the title of a recent book by James Surowiecki that presents a good deal of evidence for the proposition). This is not to say that there is no place for expertise, which saying would be foolish. However, as I believe personally, experts are very wrong to expect other people to bow automatically to their judgments - or, rather, to do so just because they are credentialed (and tattooed?). Have experts never been wrong?

I note, for example, that stock market analysts are wrong very frequently, if not nearly all the time. They habitually reach the highest pitch of enthusiastic optimism just before the crash of the bear; and can’t rouse themselves from despair until long after the birth of the bull.

And I remember that the calamity at Three Mile Island was deemed a practical impossibility by the experts - before it happened. There are so many examples. Why, even so predictable an event as the fall of the Soviet Union, a product of a multitude of objectively well understood factors, was predicted by no one – at least no expert professionally charged with and paid for prediction. And did we not go to war in Iraq because a host of experts in terrorism with secret "knowledge" told us that it was necessary? As if all that is "necessary" is also just? And did not another host of experts assure us it would be a "cakewalk"?**

But it seems to me that in such matters our hands cannot be washed clean by an appeal to experts. That would be too convenient, would it not? When we stand before the Pearly Gates, when we are asked about going to war, as we surely will, its bombs and bullets, its torture and rape, its mauling fires of universal destruction that leave men without faces and children without arms and legs, or dead, will we say, "The experts made me do it." Fie on that!

This is not to say, on the other hand, that people in their collective wisdom or lack of it do not also make many mistakes. Worse than a fear of mistakes, Nevada Vote Direct naturally raises the specter of mob rule and all of the insane predation and hysteria of revolution that it heralds. In one interview, a seasoned political reporter narrowed his superior brow and asked me the decisive question: "What if the people vote to behead all left-handed people?" What does this question imply? Truth told, we have very little respect for our neighbors. And, I admit, we may easily demonstrate that in many places and times they have been very little deserving of respect. Still, I think it is possible and proper to calm these fears, or at least put them in a proper perspective.

First, it must be remembered that Nevada Vote Direct represented only the individual and personal commitment of one candidate for public office. And no matter how many others follow his example and make the same commitment in the future, it remains an individual and personal matter. No new laws or amendments to the Constitution will be entailed in the fulfillment of these commitments. Consequently, our rightly cherished Constitution and its celebrated amendments will not be altered to any degree whatsoever – at least not by what I have proposed. Left-handers, consider yourselves safe!

But the question deserves still deeper consideration based not only on our historical experience, but specifically our very recent historical experience.

Broadly speaking, history demonstrates that the greatest impositions on personal liberty have been perpetrated during those times when the fewest people have had the most power. Yes, this may seem obvious, but it bears saying in this context. The pertinent equation is that of tyranny and oppression, not democracy and oppression. The danger of being mauled by the madding crowd is always far less potent than the danger of being brought down to ruin by the calculated reason of despots. As Mark Twain reminded us in "Connecticut Yankee," we should properly weigh the few thousand who perished in the Great Terror of the French Revolution against the vast millions who were slaughtered aimlessly and vainly by thuggish Bourbon kings over the course of centuries. In this light, mob rule is not perhaps the greatest peril that it first appears to be.

And we also see that, across the span of our entire human historical experience, liberty has always grown and flourished when greater numbers of people were brought into the process of decision. For heaven’s sake, at long last let’s learn from the broad strokes of history. Magna Carta took power from King John and spread it around among his nobles at least a little more liberally (is this a pun?). The American and French Revolutions spread the power even more liberally in their time. Subsequently, in the 19th and 20th centuries, it was spread about even more, ultimately irrespective of property, sex, and race.

And now, we must continue the process, following along in this continuous and liberal progressive development like fish in a clean and refreshing stream - or, be a disgrace to our forbears whom our descendants will rue.

Or to twist the metaphor, let’s say that we ourselves have fresh fish to fry in the fire of humanity’s perennial struggle against tyranny. Why have our traditional American liberties been under attack in recent years, even up to and including the recent, ultimate, and inconceivably insulting assault against our immemorial and inalienable right of habeas corpus? Look in vain to mob rule for your cause. Can it be instead because in recent decades power has actually percolated relentlessly upward into fewer and fewer hands? Has it something to do with the fact that fewer and fewer people consider it a matter of pride to be willingly swindled in our regular and phony elections, so much so that they opt out of the political system altogether, leaving the field to bullies. Approximately one quarter of the eligible electorate has elected George Bush twice, and an even smaller percentage brought Bill Clinton to power. Is it any wonder that the jobbers who win these elections have no commitment to the sovereign will of the people in their true majorities? They were not elected by them and they do not serve them.

Let’s tell it like it is! The real and present danger to our liberties is the current and cancerous trend toward less democracy, not more democracy. We acknowledge this implicitly when we work to get out the vote, canvassing at our neighbor’s door, or when we contribute to campaigns. We know almost instinctively that the danger will be averted only if more people can be persuaded to participate in our public life.

However, we think erroneously that the danger can be averted simply if more people can be brought to vote in our regular and customary elections as presently constituted. We are in even greater error if we think and dream in terms of voting for a different caliber of candidate. In my judgment, this strategy will never succeed, or it will succeed only marginally. Naturally, it pleased me no end when some people said that they voted for me just because I seemed to be a different caliber of candidate. But personal gratification had nothing whatever to do with my campaign. Nor has it anything to do with restoring our democracy.

And in defense of my unfavorable judgment regarding the idea of relying on more people to elect better candidates, let me simply say that it is surely born out by our historical experience over the course at least of my entire lifetime. We shall see if the results of the last election prove to be a truly significant departure from the clearly established norm in this respect. I don’t see how it can, so long as the deeper structure of power underlying our Congress new and old remains the same.

And would it not be difficult to claim that the fundamental structure of power in America has been altered in any significant way by the last election? We shall see. I will say more about this below. But here let me add only that the winners in the last election, as usual, were usually the biggest spenders. And, where did they get their money? We mustn't forget that the very structure and substance of our politics is made of that very thing: money. It is the mortar and stone of every statehouse in the land. But it is a structure and substance that corrupts itself, and so must inevitably ineluctably fall.

Nevada Vote Direct would have been the final and infallible solution to the problem of political corruption by money in one congressional district. And in the process, it would by its very nature have altered the structure of power. As I often said, in a pleasant fantasy, lobbyists seeking the vote of the Second District after my election would henceforth be advised to entertain a few hundred thousand of our friends and neighbors on a junket to the Bahamas - if, that is, they considered the "access" worth their while. And that’s what I call an alteration in the structure of power.

If you’ll permit a digression, I can’t help smiling to remember that, in the course of the campaign. I met one long-serving incumbent candidate for the State Senate who used that word (access) without a hint of squeamish discretion. He explained that this is what people get when they contribute to his campaign: access. By the way, I betray no confidence to tell this here. He said it not to me, but to all the world over the radio, before God and Mammon. I merely report, I do not make up the news. And I don’t expect you to believe it. This candidate won the election, by the way, but I cannot report that he has done the perp-walk for soliciting bribes on the radio.

The forgiving radio host who elicited this confession from an incumbent candidate, also refused to interview me, a non-incumbent challenger - which of course I understood perfectly. One has to attain to a certain level of distinction (with access!) to be on the ever-popular Bill Manders Show on KOH in Reno.

Before the election, when airtime was so crucial to the public weal, Mr. Manders gave two hours to a good churchwoman who organizes protest pickets at funerals for American war dead. She protests because she would deny the fallen their honors. She explains that our soldiers died because of the fact America loves fags. The justice of her god is a terrible swift sword, and never deferred. Declaiming the Gospel of the same godly justice, another regular and prodigal consumer of Manders’ air-time during the campaign was the fellow who is certain that every Iraqi male over the age of one ought to be rounded up and shot. Where is Herod when we need him?

Who has time on the radio for the mundane disgrace of political corruption when bang-up ideas like this can be thus and so soberly deliberated instead?

To return from this amusing interlude, I want to emphasize my point about the structure of power, and now to make explicit what I believe to be the most significant aspect of Nevada Vote Direct and the idea it represents.

As noted, I spoke everywhere about the reality of corruption, and said almost nothing about direct democracy as such. Like the abstraction of direct democracy, it also wasn’t necessary during the campaign to discuss the profound effect that it would have on the structure of power in society. But to bring the structure of power into consideration also begs the question of social change – if, that is, we will look to the structure of power to explain the obstacles in the way of dealing sensibly and effectively with our social problems. In this respect, Nevada Vote Direct represents an entirely new approach to social change. And its most significant feature is that it proposes social change by means of the fait accompli.

For the fact is that, had I but been elected, on the morning after citizens in my district would have awakened to a completely altered structure of power in society. Some people of course realized this instantly. And it was doubtless for this reason that the people who seemed outwardly to be most powerless, and also most conscious of their disenfranchisement by the present status quo, also felt the most enthusiasm for Nevada Vote Direct. The structure of power is at least half-well understood by most people. They may not know who has it, but they know who does not. Indeed, the experience of campaigning taught me that a desire for change in the structure of power is a very conspicuous object of popular desire in Nevada.

Naturally, it was also to be expected that those who derive their status from the present structure of power in society would feel the least enthusiasm for Nevada Vote Direct. Occasionally, this reflexive repulse would take the form of complete befuddlement. I will never forget the dowager pundit of a Reno political talk show who interviewed me on television early in the campaign. I later learned that she had subsequently left the station in order to be a candidate for state office herself. During the interview with me, she said over and over again, "I don’t get it. I just don’t get it." Finally, in desperation, she asked the cameraman, "Do you get it?" The cameraman was mute.

During the petition drive to place my name on the ballot, I talked to hundreds of people on the street about Nevada Vote Direct. And curious to tell, not a single one of these said, "I don’t get it." Some few didn’t like the idea, but nobody seemed to have difficulty understanding it. On the street, evidently, I didn’t happen to meet any office-holders, and so the response was as it was. (This, I suppose, is what Marx meant when he said that the mind is a superstructure – a sort of insignificant thing, a mere scaffolding on top of what a man does for a living. Better it were, then, that a man do nothing for a living, and keep thus his mental apparatus intact. But this Marxian notion is all too typical, it seems to me, of the Enlightenment putdown of man and the universe. Volumes of evidence to the contrary, I will not believe it – not entirely. I prefer not to.)

But, to my infinitely greater dismay, I also found somewhat unexpectedly that people who make their living in the business of reforming the structure of power in society were as little likely as established politicians to express even minimal interest, let alone positive enthusiasm, for the idea of Nevada Vote Direct. I refer here to consciously progressive people who one might expect would welcome any new idea at all for effecting change, considering the dismal failure of their own ideas over several generations.

Perhaps they understood that this new technology would spell the end of their own personal power in the leadership of their various movements and parties. This made me sad. Are we not entitled to expect more than self-interest from reformers? It’s been said that the Pope would go out of business were he to convert the Devil. It is a dilemma for saints. How glad I am not to be a saint!

Objectively, and however we might feel about it, it is perfectly self-evident that Nevada Vote Direct by its very definition represents the immediate potential for a complete alteration in the structure of power in society. And this is the really extraordinary thing about it. For we usually reserve to revolutions results of this kind. Or, we mistakenly envision it as the result of decades of reforming petitions, and demonstrations. This latter is the work of those aforementioned lifers in the reform racket. We suppose that for justice in this world we must wade through a swamp of letters to congressmen, and proceed to the invention of new parties, and the election of better candidates.

As if politicians of any sort whatsoever, of any party, are capable of reforming in a competent way our campaign and lobbying laws. Those who hold out hopes for this, self-reform by the political establishment, are trying to lift the nation up by its bootstraps. (Is this not, after all, a physical impossibility? Where is Newton when we need him?)

To make the historical point once more, through all my life this has been the rusty arsenal of failed reformers everywhere. And still today they believe or pretend to believe that one day soon we may even possibly hope to aim to think to plan to work to gradually move in the direction of tending toward the possibility of envisioning a way of slightly changing the world – not soon, I should say, but more likely in the Great By and By, and long after the poles have melted.

This tired and tedious broken-down horse-and-buggy technology of change is still all that we have - short of Nevada Vote Direct. This is the marvelous promise that I don’t doubt will be fulfilled by some other candidate in another election soon. And from the start, at the very earliest beginning, this was exactly what I had in mind: that is, to demonstrate a new and easy way, a practically do-it-yourself way, to restructure power in society.

Nevada Vote Direct, as I’ve said, requires no new laws, and no new Constitutional amendments. In fact, as radical as it may be, it involves no formal alteration in our familiar American model of (small "r") republican democracy - unless citizen participation is not part of that model after all.

But it is!

In short, my campaign and the idea it was based on depended simply and solely on my own personal commitment to conduct the affairs of the office in an entirely new way. But I sought thereby only to give a new subjective content (or the old restored) to the form of representative democracy, while leaving the form itself unchanged. Changing the form requires altogether too much work. We haven’t the time nor talent for it.

But let this unfailingly be said as well: if Nevada Vote Direct does nothing to change the constitutional letter of the law, yet it also renews its spirit. This is the very same spirit that was breathed into our political institutions by Washington, and Jefferson, and the rest. And, though revolutionaries, they themselves did not invent, but received and transmitted their faith in their turn from hallowed and illustrious forbears all through time.

All true revolutions are profoundly restorative, for all societies are naturally subject to corruption as they age. But if a society’s ideals are sound and properly lofty, they may serve as attractors for innovative reform, so that society may perpetuate its values, and not just in words alone. It is our duty as citizens to reincarnate the spirit of liberty once again – as Hegel might say, to make the very truth concrete.

This, it seems to me, is our responsibility as adults in our time. In the campaign, I asked people, "Aren’t we adults? Don’t adults make decisions for themselves?" As adults, we must see ourselves as the deciding agents of social change. We must admit and affirm that, for the most part, the forces that shape our world and its future are not like the weather, outside of our control, something only to complain about. People set these forces in motion, and people may and must control them.

My message is very simple: we now have the technology to exercise that control. Let’s use it!

How then did people respond to this call to adulthood? Everything I’ve said thus far is of no importance whatsoever without a satisfactory answer to this question. Yet, here, I am least able to provide an answer.

Several things may be said. First, it was clear that a large majority of people with whom I spoke personally were enthusiastically positive about the idea of Nevada Vote Direct. This made actual campaigning a great pleasure. However, even in a sparsely populated district like Nevada’s Second, one can meet only a comparatively very small number of people. No amount of shoe leather can alter this fact, especially for an unknown and independent candidate who has very few established public venues in which to present himself.

With more money, naturally, I might have amplified my message. As it was, in my travels I hardly ever found anybody who had as much as heard about Nevada Vote Direct. This in spite of the fact that I succeeded in getting a number of newspaper articles and radio and television appearances. (One guesses that the thrilling "Nevada News Makers" on local Reno television, has very few really regular viewers.)

I had hoped that the unusual nature of my campaign would stimulate much more state and national media attention, which would have compensated to some extent for my lack of campaign money. In this respect, as in every other at this late date in our national history, the media proved to be, alas, an all too predictable disappointment. I believe one of the wonders of this campaign was that such a remarkably innovative, but also inevitable, development, which ultimately and in due time will surely change the entire nature of society, went so very under-reported.

My campaign fund and the media being what they were, it was no surprise that I was not elected. Had I enough money to make a sufficient number of voters aware of my candidacy, I believe I would have won. But of course one can’t be sure. In the end, I received only 2% of the vote.

I had also hoped that it would be possible to find new and clever ways to compensate for a lack of campaign money. I imagined that a word-of-mouth campaign, involving the participation of many individual megaphones, would be possible.

I was wrong. And it is important to make this point because we mustn’t permit any airy idealism to dispel our solid perception of reality. Idealism should inform reality, not distort it.

And in this vein it must be said that I found the supporters of Nevada Vote Direct to be almost entirely passive in their support. It is not my place or desire or intent to judge this passivity. But it certainly must be taken into consideration by others who will follow up on what I have done. Caveat emptor.

During the campaign, I was often asked how many members we had at Nevada Vote Direct. I did not want to provide any ammunition for detractors, for someone can always be found to laugh at what is small and seemingly outlandish. They do not see in the tiny acorn the vaulted oak sheltering multitudes.

Now I can freely state that we had some thirty members by the time of the election. A small number, it’s true. But it would be shortsighted to draw negative conclusions from the small membership that we gathered at Nevada Vote Direct – people who are, after all, self-selected leaders in the community, who supported what was still just a campaign.

In the days after the election, however, had I been elected, people in the Second District would have been saying: "Why, say, did you know that thirty people at Nevada Vote Direct are controlling Daniel Rosen’s votes in Congress?" "What? NO WAY! That ain’t right. We better get in there. Where do we sign up? You say it’s free?"

In a similar dynamic, involving other rewards and penalties, people have been compelled (to use a word) to hook up to the Internet. I recall that George Bernard Shaw once made sport of socialism as a system in which a person would be compelled not to be poor, and compelled not to starve, and compelled not to go without shelter. However this may be, in the system I propose, a person would be compelled not to be a passive victim of self-serving politicians. Americans would be compelled to be free. That would be ironic, would it not, in this America that supposedly wants to compel the world to be free? What’s good for the goose may be good for the gander?

One learns very early in a campaign of this sort just exactly how true it is that the political parties have all the cards in the fixed game of elections. There were exasperating experiences for me in the course of the campaign in this respect. For example, I felt somewhat abused when I heard one of my opponents in the race claiming to be an independent candidate – never mind her million-dollar-plus funding from one of the major political parties. And felt abused to hear the same candidate on NPR quoting my stump speech about political corruption - verbatim but without attribution.

And I was very sad, at a moment when the nation confronts terrible life and death issues, and when a lack of funds prevented my own direct mail communications, to see her direct mail communications to the voters - for example, an oversized brochure explaining how it came to pass that a neighbor mistook a painted top hat on a shingle sign, and so the family ranch in Lovelock, Nevada, came to be known as the "Flapjack." That information would certainly have decided my vote had it not been previously committed. But on all substantive issues, this candidate was implacably non-committal, and her extremely well-paid professional political consultants and handlers had succeeded well in teaching her how to say (when she wasn't quoting me) absolutely nothing in an avalanche of strained, trivial, blighted and ineptly faux eloquence.

And there was the unbeatable, almost unbearable, lightness of her touch. For example, there was the time when she claimed innocence because her party committee, supposedly without due consultation, had issued a press release to the effect that the other party’s candidate had a car impounded in a federal criminal case involving a bosom buddy who just happens to be one of the nation’s foremost drug dealers.

"But it wasn’t my car," exclaimed the accused and distraught other candidate. "It was just in my garage."

There was enough good humor to go around. I recall the illkempt gentleman and candidate for local office who chatted with me one golden summer afternoon during a candidate forum/picnic. I learned his age when he told me, "I’m doing this for the kids. They’re the ones I’m worried about. I’m 80 years old. Look at me! What have I got left. Another 20 years!" Forgive me, but my merely casual impression suggested that, had he expected as much, he’d have taken better care of himself.

Thanks for the memories, ladies and gentlemen.

And thanks to all of you, the supporters of Nevada Vote Direct and my campaign. I think we may be extremely gratified to know that we have introduced a new idea into the political discourse of the nation. I hope that you will be proud to look back on this campaign, and to have been a part of it. I am ever so proud to know that I had your confidence and trust. I shall always remember it with the greatest pleasure and satisfaction.

Looking forward, let me conclude with a few words about the future.

After a period of dispassionate reflection and consideration, I have decided to recast Nevada Vote Direct as a nationwide organization welcoming under its umbrella (after a process of invitation and interview) new candidates who will commit to holding congressional office on the same terms that I declared in my campaign. Several prospective candidates have already expressed an interest.

I will organize America Vote Direct as the coordinating agency of various state divisions – such as Nevada Vote Direct, Florida Vote Direct, Oregon Vote Direct, etc. I 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, and customized for each individual candidate’s district. Each DMS will be owned and controlled by the eligible voters of the district.

Please, don’t think me fanatic – your very own Savonarola of Software Militant – though I should think other follies could be worse: say, indifference or cynicism. Or, if my dementia is plain and the affliction beyond cure, only remember that nature, and history at her leave, comprehend even madness in the grandest scheme of things. And, as Shakespeare knew, the sublimest truth oft cavorts on the lips of fools.

* Anita, in "West Side Story." (return)

** As an addendum to the above text, I cannot resist drawing upon what must surely be one of the most glaring illustrations of the wisdom of crowds. At this point, in June 2007, six months into a new Congress, we are being treated to a display of governing corruption and incompetence such as I think has very rarely been seen in the annals of governmental infamy. One thinks of France in the years just prior to the Revolution of 1789, when the fate of that nation was in the hands of a man, the slightly retarded Louis XVI, whom Thomas Carlyle most aptly called the "Supreme Solecism." He was surrounded by a governing class, ignoble nobles of the robe and sword, whose incapacity has never been surpassed - until, that is, the present era. And so we find ourselves today embroiled in a war on the sands of Arabia that is recognized as an incomparable blunder and crime by a vast majority of ordinary citizens, not just in the United States but around the world. Any moderately sensible observer cannot fail to see that the nation is likely to be thoroughly bankrupted by this inglorious and wicked adventure. Yet it goes on and on and on, creating untold and devastating, indeed completely unnecessary, misery in the lives of millions. Never has the right of citizens to object and petition been revealed so futile and vain. Never has the right of representation been so brazenly ignored and repudiated. Who, I ask, can save us in this hour of national suicide? Those good and decent "representatives" in Congress whom the Los Angeles Times characterized as smarter than you or I? And how long would this war continue if representatives in Congress were bound without recourse or waiver to respect the will of the people, as objectively measured through Decision Management Systems of the sort that I propose? This question too has an objective answer. The will of the people on the issue of the war is abundantly clear to all but those in whose hands our future verges to oblivion. (return)