Come join the grassroots organization for political reform at the local level.
Welcome to Local Revolutions, an internet grassroots organization that uses the law to demand political reform for our cities and counties, removing the discriminating voting systems now in place.
Our Goal:
- Full representation of voters, replacing district voting/at-large voting with that better system.
Our Plan:
- Change the voting system where it is easiest to achieve because the law already demands it.
Obviously, changing the US Constitution is close to impossible. So, let’s not go there. We focus on State and local levels that are both covered by the US Constitution as their needing to deliver us our legal equality, both in the voting process and in the voting outcome. Today, we only have voter equality in the process, and not in the outcome.
The easiest location to make this demand is the local level. Yet when changing the way we elect our local level representatives, we should expect a trickle-up effect occurring toward the larger levels of government. When there are three levels of red-and-blue outcomes like we mostly have today, then it will be great when yellow can come in on one of these levels in decent numbers.
Here’s the simplified legal story:
- The State is doing something that it is not allowed to do in light of our local elections, and that is where we can take our first steps to improve the way we vote.
In an easy example: The landlord (the State) owns an apartment complex (of cities and counties), and in the apartments there are kitchens (for holding local elections). Today, the State demands that we do NOT cook Brussels sprouts in these kitchens.
Translation, they make it verboten to have Thomas Jefferson’s clean voting system in place. This system is also known as proportional voting.
The State is engaged in a legal overreach. The State is not allowed to declare what cannot be cooked in a kitchen in a home the State is not living in. It owns the building, can even tell what kinds of kitchen amenities there are, but the State has no legal control over what to cook in these apartments.
- The State can declare what it wants to cook in the State kitchen, but not in our kitchens.
The Bill of Rights has indeed been read this way; there are legal precedents that declare that governments must use the better system and cannot use discriminating systems — at the local levels of government.
What is more: The Bill of Rights demands that we have proportional voting at the local level because it is the only clean voting system. Governments cannot use an inferior system when a better system is available, unless given exception to do so. At the local level, no government of whatever stature is given that exception.
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Step 1 is easy:
Together with Local Revolutions grassroots organization, you can send your city or county government a Constitutional Invocation. You can demand that the best possible voting system is used in your city and your county. Ask us for text to copy if you want to describe this more in-depth.
Don’t want to send an Invocation yourself? Then reply to this article with just City+State (or County+State), and we’ll send an Invocation out to your local government officials. Your name does not even need to be underneath the letter.
If you want to do more, then help set up a chapter of Local Revolutions in your city and your state.
One of the goals of Local Revolutions is education about voting systems and how voting systems can empower voters more or can prevent voters from receiving full empowerment. For sure, our government has not educated us about other voting systems and simply declared that we are the best already without giving further information for us to make up our own minds.
Here is an example about voting systems differing in how they deliver their outcomes:
To the left, eight council seats elected in eight districts. Just the majority (50% plus one vote) is needed to win a single seat. In green, the minimum that voters will be represented by their own choice. In white, the maximum that voters will be represented by a person they did not vote for.
- To the right, eight council seats are selected via a communal process in which each voter had one vote in total, not eight. Thomas Jefferson devised this system already. As a result, the minimum number of voters that pick their own representative is near 90%. A maximum of 11.11% of the voters may not get the one they wanted — when there are eight seats.
To the left, voters often have to choose between Lemon Yellow and Tangerine Orange (example names for the two candidates ahead in the polls to keep it simple). Voters have a limited choice and may get the one they didn’t pick themselves.
- To the right, a voter can pick Cobalt Blue when Cobalt Blue is their favorite color. They will get Cobalt Blue (though they may end up getting Navy Blue); they will not end up with Lemon Yellow or Tangerine Orange based on their vote.
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Does it matter who sits in the seats?
Let’s examine all US Senators because they have that simple 100 seats in total that makes it easier to see what is going on.
The US Senators win their seats on average with about 60 percent of the votes. That means that the largest group of voters are actually the Losing Voters.
Here is how that works:
- With 60 percent of the voters getting their representatives, 30 percent of the voters got their Democratic Senator, 30 percent of the voters got their Republican Senator, and 40 percent of the voters went home empty-handed.
- The largest group is then indeed the Losing Voters group.
Still, there is something worse hidden in plain sight. This outcome means that just 30 percent of all the voters help establish the ‘majority’ that decides the direction of our nation. Both parties need to win that right 30% of the voters for one of them to form the majority in the Senate. They don’t need to focus on all voters; they must focus on winning that 30% of the voters.
When looking at abortion, for instance, we see with our own eyes that 30% of the voters are dictating the agenda. If we were all against abortion, then all would be fine, politically. But a clear majority of the voters agree that abortion is up to a woman to decide.
Our nation is run by 30% to the left, or by 30% to the right. All because 40% of the voters go home empty-handed systematically.
In Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain, those nations are run by at least 50% of the voters because they have a system of full representation. They happen to have abortion policies in place that ranks them with nations that have the lowest abortion rates in the world. Better still, the policy got created by politicians, so the people are in control better than we are here.
- Oversees, it was not a Supreme Court decision that got overturned by a Supreme Court decision, simply because Congress could only sit on its hands on this issue. Oversees, the politicians put it in place.
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At the Federal level, we are out of luck and cannot get the change we deserve. The US Constitution tells us how to vote for the Federal level, and changing the US Constitution is very much near-impossible. So, it’s the law, but only for the Federal level.
The easiest location to get the better voting system in place is at the local level, where abortion is actually not one of the political items. Yet by voting for the representatives with a system that is fair, our wishes can trickle up to the higher levels of government better than they are now.
The Founding Fathers are with us for State and local levels. We should have this in place already, though the local levels is the easiest to change.
What are we doing?
States, cities and counties are being made aware that they are trespassing into the powers that were granted to the People. They are overstepping their territory and they need to be told that they should not be doing that.
Legal equality is enshrined in the US Constitution and we should have it everywhere (except where the US Constitution takes it away as it indeed does for Federal elections). Yet our two-party system is particularly bolted to the ground by the States mimicking the way the Federal elections are held. They made the two parties near-invincible. Meanwhile, the US Constitution does not tell these officials how we should elect these State and local officials, but it does tell them to keep the privileges of the People intact, including honoring legal equality.
Yes, we can win this battle — today at the local levels, tomorrow at the State levels.
You can help by joining the Local Revolutions grassroots organization.
- The Ninth, the Tenth, and the Fourteenth Amendments all give powers to the People, and even warns governments not to trespass into these areas.
If you want a better society that is more fair to all (we can’t create paradise, but we can improve how we operate today), then join the Local Revolutions grassroots movement. We got to start at the most logical spot, right where the law says we should have the better voting system in place. We got the help of the Founding Fathers.
This is what we need:
- People invoking their cities and counties
- People writing letters of support to Mayor, representatives, city or county clerk, and the local Election Commission
- People writing the Governor and the Secretary of State to demand that the local levels of government use the better system that is available to them and that this is required per the Bill of Rights
- Promote education about our voting system and how it currently helps an elite declare the direction of the nation
We don’t use names (except the names of the Local Revolution organizers) unless you want to step up to the plate and become an organizer.
- Later on, we will need to pick a city to take to court and demand recompense to make sure all other cities pay attention. That is one to two years away, the current 2022 setup is that we are involved with Step 1 and Step 2 only, while taking a city to court is Step 4.
- The separate-but-equal cases of the 1950s form the legal basis of the Constitutional Invocation, and the request for recompense can lead to serious amounts (and therefore lead to serious attention).
Hundreds of political science professors across the nation were asked to comment on the legal position, and no legally negative replies were received (other than some negative replies of This is not how we do it). Meanwhile, a good number of professors agree that this is a legally correct path. The voters are superior, particularly at the local levels.
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Come join. Help spread the message. We all deserve a better government. Join us by showing your interest on Medium first. We are a grassroots organization.
Local Revolutions. The Founding Fathers Are with Us.
Check the list of cities and counties that have received an Invocation already:
