Local Revolutions

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 in cities and counties.

Our Plan:

• Change 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. Yet when changing the way we elect our local level representatives, we should expect a trickle-up effect occurring to the larger levels of government. When there are three levels of red-and-blue, then it will be great when yellow can come in on one of these levels.

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.

Let’s say it in plain words first because it can get complicated if all legal terms are used.

• 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.

That is 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, but 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 cook Brussels sprouts at the local level. 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 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 without giving further information for us to make up our own minds.

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Let’s talk more about our voting system, because we all know something is fishy and yet it is complicated to get the leak above water.

Here is a good and simple example how the political setup is part of the problem. However, the example is about the Federal level where change is actually hardest and not immediately available like it is at the local level. So this example is just about understanding our voting system and its implications.

All US Senators win their seats on average with about 60 percent of the votes. That means that the largest group of voters are 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 the Losing Voters group.

This also means that just 30 percent of all the voters help establish the ‘majority’ that decides the direction of our nation.

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 almost 70% 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 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.

We do not have We The People, but We The Minority Rulers of the People. All it takes is 30% of the voters and it delivers us an occasional extreme swing.

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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 in the representatives we want 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. We should have this in place already.

Here is an example of our system next to Proportional Voting in a city with eight council seats.

Eight seats are up for grabs in this example showing both forms of democracy.

In green, we see the voters that are guaranteed to get their representative. It is the minimum number, so to the left we see that this is 50 percent plus one vote for each of the eight districts. To the right, the Proportional Voting system shows us how each seat requires about 11 percent of all votes to win one of the eight seats. The overall minimum is then 88.89 percent of the voters getting what they wanted.

In white, we see the area in which voters have a chance to win, but didn’t win. White represents therefore the maximum lack of voter empowerment. Notice how we have far more lack of voter empowerment than voters in, for instance, Sweden. In Sweden, close to all voters can point to the representative they desired, sitting in one of the seats.

It means that our governmental representatives do not have to listen as closely to us as their Swedish counterparts must. In Proportional Voting, a voter has the right to pick from as many candidates as possible.

• It is like walking into the store with $10 and perhaps 40 items available at that price. After walking around once or twice, the voter picks the desired item, and will either get that item (most of the time) or the item that is most similar to the one that was picked.
• In our current election format, however, we still have that $10, but the store we have to go to has perhaps 7 items for that prize, and we already know beforehand which 2 items have the best chance of winning. You get what the majority picked, no matter what you wanted.

Two forms of democracy, and the funny part is that one of the Founding Fathers was the first person to devise that Proportional Voting system:

• Thomas Jefferson.

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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. 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 on 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 ask us to do so.

• Later on, we will need to pick a city to take to court and demand a large amount of recompense to make sure all other cities follow suit. That is one to two years away. Particularly because separate-but-equal was already decided by the court and forms the legal basis of the Constitutional Invocation, the request for recompense can lead to serious numbers (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 This is not how we do it). Meanwhile, a good number of professors agree that this is a legally correct path.

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Come join. Help spread the message. We all deserve a better government.

Local Revolutions. The Founding Fathers Are with Us.

Check the list of cities and counties that have received an Invocation already:

Citizens Invoking the US Constitution