As I listen to people like Cody Willard talk about how bad the Democratic and Republican Parties are and that we need to be looking at and voting for independent Candidates, I wonder how this can come about. So after a couple of weeks thinking and talking about it, I think I may have the beginnings of an idea for a new type of Political Party.

 First, the "New" Party needs to be neutral in a regards to the views of its Candidates, no Party Platform on "issues" and the like.
Second, the "New" Party's Candidates will be chosen at Random from Volunteer Members of the Party
Third, there will never be support for Incumbents, new Candidates will be chosen and supported each election cycle.
Fourth, the "New" Party should focus on Local Elective Positions first and always. There are a lot of elective positions at the City, County and State Level that can occupy the Party's time for years to come.
Fifth, the "New" Party's funding should come from Party Members only of which there are two types: Volunteers and Supporters.
Sixth, the "New" Party should work hard to make sure that its Candidates are always on the ballot(s) for any and all election cycles by making sure it has Registered and stays registered in all States that members are in.
Seventh, no Party Administrators nor Board Members will ever be paid to work for the party.
Eighth, the Party Administrators and or Board Members will be selected at random from eligible Volunteer Members

So based on the 8 "Principles" above, you end up with a Party that has the potential to put a lot of candidates on the ballots, year in and year out. This Party has the potential to give us true "Citizen Politicians" since the party would not support a Incumbent member, with the exception of the rarity of a Volunteer Member getting selected to the same position again ( Which in my current thinking, would not be allowed due to the "Third Principle" and the position would be redrawn ).

On to some details about some of the things that have just been glossed over. What do I mean about the Party not have a "platform", well it does, it is the Principles of the Party and that is it. No "Hot Issues", no Party based views on anything other than providing candidates for people to vote for on the ballots, no compromises and "Back Room" deals on who is the Party's nominee. I also stated that there are two types of members so I should talk about them a bit.

Support Members, I could see this being the majority of the party and will provide most of the funding of the party. This people can be seen as a volunteer pool in which the other members that are selected to run for a position can go to to help them set up their campaigns and to get the word out. This is not an obligation of the member, only their membership fees are required. I did say that there would be a membership fees and Support Member fees will be higher than Volunteer Members.

Volunteer Members, those people that are willing to put their names in a hat and attempt to run and win whatever position they have randomly selected for. They too will pay membership dues, just less than support members. Volunteer Members will have an option to decline up to two positions in their lifetime while maintaining there Volunteer Status. If a person feels that they are not in the position to run for an office, they should change their membership to Support Status.

 Another aspect of the Party is how Volunteer Members will be selected for various positions. Well it is obvious that the Party cannot expect to start off with enough members to fill all the election determined positions in the United States, so the obvious thing to do is focus on where we have members. Currently I believe that the Party keep as little information about its members as possible, so having the member's Location of Residency ( Zip +4 ) is required, a way to contact the member if they are selected ( email more than likely ), their Name and that is about it as far as I am concerned.

If a member is selected, then the acceptance process begins.
First the member is contacted and told of the position that they have be selected to run for and what the position is about.
The member is then given an opportunity to decline the position.
If they take the selection then the vetting process begins.
The main portion of the vetting process to make sure that the person is eligible to actually run for the position.Things like are they of age, that they are at the residence they say they are and they meet or exceed other requirements that the position entails.
If the person passes the vetting process, then the party now will work to place the person on the ballot and make sure all the basic paperwork is taken care of and a call for volunteers will be placed.
If the person fails the vetting process, the selection process starts over for that position. If there is not enough time to select a new person, the position will go unfilled.

I would say that the selection process should start around the same time that the "main" parties start their primaries. That way the Party would have adequate time to select the members for the various ballots.

So what positions would the Party draw from its Volunteer Members? I say it would start as close to the members as possible.  Since we have the ZIP +4 information for all Volunteer Members, we could easily map all the possible positions to the members available. From that basic information, we can build the various pools to draw from and work our way from the "smallest" positions to the largest. There can be cases that there is only one member available to draw from and would basically be automatically selected. These positions can be noted weeks before the "drawing", giving Support Members a chance to change their membership so that they can expand the pool of contestants.

I know this is just a basic idea, but maybe it is something we as a country needs. Letting people have another well supported party to chose from with  a focus on the individual candidates that are not directly tied to special interests or big party platforms and "myths" of what a party stands for. Are there issues that can come about from this party, sure there could be, but I would think that it would be to a lesser order than what we have today.  Could a member be selected be of what would be considered unelectable, sure, but there are always candidates I wouldn't vote for regardless of what party they are part of.

I look forward to hearing from others on the ideas I have presented and I am more than willing to debate anyone on the merits and to provide information to fill in the gaps of the ideas I have already talked about.

Thanks for reading this and sorry for taking so long for getting this online.

   After talking with various friend about the US today, I always come to the conclusion that the vast majority of our politicians could care less about us and that our world is becoming more and more controlled by small "clics" of individuals. Think about it, how are our "choices" for President selected in the first place, most are sidelined before we even get a chance to vote for them. ( They withdraw, never invited to a debate, can't get any media time... on and on. ) Some say vote the bums out, but we would just get railroaded into a new bum that the "System" puts in front of us. Some say that we should have the option on the ballot for "None of the Above", hmmm, maybe that is an idea, I will explore that a bit further.

   People talk about this as an option from time to time, but I find that that will never come to past. The reason for it is simple, it just breaks the voting process at its core. The people on the ballot are there to fill a "necessary" position and "None of the Above" can not fill the position and in the end, you have to have someone.

So basically, there has to be another option, something that would help do some of the following:

More choices on the ballots, Reducing the "Picking the lesser of two Evils" by exposing more ideas and principles to the electorate and/or Breaking the stranglehold that the Democratic and Republican Political Parties have on our Government from the Local level to the Federal level.

I have an idea about how to achieve some of these goals and provide support for independent candidates small and large. I will write about that later tonight I think.