Just over 60 days out from November’s congressional elections, the sanctity of the election process itself is a source of great concern. The #Crosscheck method of voter purging, which starts from a position of assuming the guilt of legally registered voters, remains in play. Partisan Secretaries of State and their county seat equivalents constrict the number of precincts and number of voting booths in each as tools to disenfranchise African Americans and make their voting an hours-long process.

And both state voting rolls and the ballot counting process itself remain hackable for Russian or GOP tampering.

These are not crafted flaws that America is powerless to overcome. These are not deflating realities that may keep Democrats from voting blue.

These travesties represent causes that MUST BE FRONT AND CENTER of EVERY DEMOCRAT’S CAMPAIGN. Let’s make every race a crucial step in preserving the lifeblood of the American dream: a referendum on truth and fairness in every aspect of achieving an accurate democracy.

The first plank of the We Party Populists Platform focuses specifically on all aspects of that goal. Here it is:mce_markermce_marker

Optimizing Democracy

The WPP platform first tackles the problem of entrenched power, clearing the way for the progressive populist policies to follow.

1-  The advance of oligarchic rule in America can only be reversed if we curb disproportionate influence on policy, funding, and oversight by corporations and billionaires.

• End private funding for campaigns for state and federal office. Make them all publicly funded.
• Overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court decision and assert that money is not speech and corporations are not people.
• Put severe restrictions on lobbying with a renewed focus on corruption and quid pro quo.
• Enforce rules on 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) PACs and superPACs that are supposed to be operating for public welfare not as political surrogates.
• Establish a Political Advertisement Accuracy panel to set guidelines for the boundaries of misinformation and fabrication. Prospective ads have to pass this bipartisan panel before airing. All submissions will remain secret until air.
• Restrict the practice of corporate insiders regulating the industries they came from.
• Curb the practice of hiding unrelated riders and amendments within legislation.
• Return the filibuster to the original intent, requiring the floor to be continually held if a vote is to be held up.

But a return to actual representative democracy will require addressing the next theme:

2-  To claim ourselves to be a healthy democracy, we must protect our ultimate freedom, the right to vote, and restore election integrity so accuracy and opportunity can never again be questioned.

• Require that all state and national elections be conducted on hand-counted paper ballots.
• Overturn voter photo ID laws intended to disenfranchise the poor, elderly, African Americans, and students.
• Restore the full strength of the Voting Rights Act to prevent state officials from targeted manipulations of the opportunity to vote.
• Eliminate the process of Crosscheck, purging ethnic voters who simply have the same name in different states. As of now, Secretaries of State can allege double voting and push voters onto provisional ballots with no prior notice. This violation of their rights can no longer be tolerated without due process.
• End partisan gerrymandering by having state and federal district lines determined by non-partisan commissions minimizing the “wasted votes” per district and ending the “crack and pack” strategy by parties in control.
• End the practice of state officials arbitrarily and strategically purging voters from the voting roles.
• Make the strategy of putting too few voting machines in a precinct to create unnecessarily long lines illegal, with fines, prison time, and civil suits all potential ramifications.
• Establish a minimum number of precincts per 10,000 people for all state and federal elections.
• Make voter registration automatic.
• Restore early voting.
• Identify and combat all facets of Russian interference in the electoral process, social media infiltration, and covert funding of US-based superPACs.

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We Party Populists urges every Democrat to run on the principle that without these reforms, individuals do not hold the level of power in determining their leaders that the founding fathers intended.

Right now, democracy is only optimized for corporations and billionaires. To begin to reverse this, and work towards the We Party Populists goal of achieving a “Truly Inclusive America by 2025,” we must take back both houses of Congress this fall. And #BlueWave2018 will lead directly to #ImpeachmentSpring2019 when Democrats chair all investigative committees.

That destiny will be most efficiently achieved if the Optimizing Democracy aspect of the WPP is loudly touted in every state. This concept can be a source of hope and resurrection of our democratic process.

To see the full We Party Populists Platform and other aspects of this movement go to the WPP Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/WePartyPopulists/