One great weakness of the nonpartisan reform movement or voters first movement, whatever you want to call it, is that it doesn’t have an easily findable front door or a place where you can do one stop shopping.
To a large degree I hope that the information I share on my website helps educate folks and win them to the cause, but I also want to help point people in the right direction if they want to get involved and help.
For a list of websites for non-partisan, not for profit organizations that are leading the movement, I recommend checking out the National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers and the Bridge Alliance. They are umbrella groups that many of the orgs belong to and from their websites you can find links to the other orgs themselves directly. My personal top favorite orgs that I’ve been involved with over the last 8 years are FairVote, Unite America, Open Primaries, Represent Us, Institute for Political Innovation, RepresentWomen, and VoteRunLead.
In my view, the biggest need our country has at this time is for education about our situation and the opportunity cost of continuing to do business as usual under the two party system. Until enough people are educated about the problem and possible solutions, we will continue to have the same poor choices of public officials and divisive national conversation. So job number one for you the reader is to become an educator….of your friends, your family, your co-workers, and if you can, consider donating to those orgs mentioned.
The second biggest need is we need people running for office who believe in and embody these kinds of ideals of putting country over party, keeping an open mind, being solution oriented, etc. Even if YOU don’t win as a candidate, if you take the approach of using the campaign trail to educate your fellow citizens, then the country will have won in the long term, and you might just inspire others in the process to pick up the torch after you’ve put it down.
However you slice it, be the change you wish to see in the world.
And if you’d like to contact me with questions, comments, feedback, feel free to do so below.
Perry Waag 