The majority of U.S. voters, in tandem with voters worldwide, disapprove of the performance of their elected representatives, and are doubtful government can solve the mounting crises threatening their well-being and livelihoods.
Voters think the nation's lawmakers are more interested in serving special interests than the people they represent, and would like to see most members of Congress replaced. Yet the large majority of Congressional representatives remain in office due to numerous obstacles that prevent voters from running and electing candidates of their choice.
Such obstacles include campaign financing by special interests, gerrymandered election districts, and unfair election laws, electoral practices and e-voting technologies that favor incumbents and skew the vote.
This website, which is being developed around the recently patented Interactive Voter Choice System, is designed to enable voters to overcome these obstacles. The system's agenda-setting, political organizing and consensus-building tools make it possible for voters of all persuasions to set legislative agendas, individually and collectively, and build voting blocs and electoral coalitions with political parties of their choice to run and elect representatives to enact their agendas.
The tools will empower voters to eliminate the current disconnect between voters and elected representatives who claim to be enacting the priorities of millions of constituents, even though their constituents have no means of specifying what their priorities really are, across the board, or banding together to hold their representatives accountable for enacting them.
Voters will be able to set legislative agendas and connect with like-minded voters to form actual voting blocs and electoral coalitions with political parties to run and elect candidates in real elections.
The web-based blocs and coalitions they build using the system's tools, and host on the website, will be able to:
- Place their candidates on the ballot lines of any party they wish by having bloc and coalition members registered in the party collect the number of signatures from registered party voters that state election laws require.
- Run candidates without special interest campaign financing who can defeat candidates who accept such financing.
- Create a decentralized nationwide network of grassroots blocs and coalitions that collectively surpass the influence of special interests in determining who runs for office, who gets elected, and what laws are enacted.
- Hold their elected representatives accountable at the ballot box for enacting their legislative agendas.
Political parties are an essential part of the democratic process — except when they lose touch with voters at the grassroots and they and their candidates get too close to special interests. They interfere with democratic electoral processes when they get so big and pass so many laws in their favor that they crowd out other political parties and prevent their candidates from winning.
Accordingly, the Interactive Voter Choice System enables broad cross-sections of voters to join forces to use the large scale collective action power of the Internet to get control of electoral and legislative processes and outcomes at the same time.
It gives voters of all persuasions unique tools for setting their legislative agendas, and building voting blocs and coalitions with political parties of their choice around common agendas that their members set collectively after everyone has had a chance to discuss and debate them. These blocs and coalitions can place their candidates on the ballot lines of any parties they wish by collecting the required number of signatures from the parties' registered voters.
The system will return the U.S. political party system to health by enabling voters to determine party legislative agendas and slates of candidates in a democratic manner, via voting blocs they organize and run inside and outside political parties. In concert with organized political parties, these blocs and coalitions will become the driving forces of U.S. elections.
Most importantly, these blocs and coalitions will ensure that party agendas and slates reflect the increasingly diverse stances of most voters, which are now crossing traditional partisan and ideological lines with increasing frequency.
In fact, voters can use the system's consensus-building tools to create transpartisan electoral bases that cross party lines and become large enough to beat candidates backed by special interests.
The Interactive Voter Choice System's unique agenda setting, political organizing and consensus-building tools are critical to voter empowerment because they let each individual voter decide what issues and legislation they care most about, and then connect with like-minded voters who share their priorities.
Collectively negotiating and setting comprehensive legislative agendas is usually the stumbling block that prevents voters from banding together in voting blocs and collations large enough to run and elect their own candidates to enact their own agendas.
That’s because people tend to express their preferences in different ways and disagree more about the terms they use than the substance of their ideas. And since they have no mechanism for collectively debating and negotiating a common agenda across the board, they never get beyond their initial differences of opinion to form large scale voting blocs and coalitions that can beat special interest-backed candidates.
This dilemma has been resolved by a novel but simple solution. It consists of a comprehensive list of mainstream legislative options, pro and con, on two decks of cards. (These decks are stored in the Legislative Options Database here on this website)
Each individual voter can choose their preferred issues from this list, add options to the list, and write their own comments on the options they choose so that their choices really reflect their own ideas. It's the first time in history that voters will have a systematic way of setting their legislative agendas across the board in writing, updating them whenever they wish, and using their own agendas to build winning electoral coalitions with broad cross-sections of voters to get control of electoral processes and their outcomes.
By creating such a list — and a voting utility for voters to vote on what priorities to include in common agendas — the Interactive Voter Choice System has made it possible for voters to overcome differences in the way they express their priorities and the stumbling blocks that prevent voters from running elections and deciding who will be elected and what laws will be enacted.
And by streamlining collective agenda-setting, and empowering voters to join forces to build voting blocs and coalitions with like-minded voters, the electorate will now be able to restructure and democratize electoral processes so that voters control them, rather than special interests.
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The Interactive Voter Choice System was developed and patented by Nancy Bordier, a political scientist, web entrepreneur, former electoral candidate and university professor.
She also developed and patented the System for Playing an Interactive Voter Choice Game, which enables voters to learn how to use the tools of the Interactive Voter Choice System to build winning voting blocs and electoral coalitions. The Citizens Winning Hands® Game is an online multiparty game of electoral strategy and chance that will be accessible on this website.
Her experience in electoral politics includes a 1985 campaign on the Democratic ticket for the office of mayor of White Plains, New York. A middle class city with 57,000 residents, White Plains is a suburb of Manhattan and the county seat of Westchester County.
Her opponent won his fourth four-year term with the aid of large campaign contributions from developers doing business with the city. Bordier's platform advocated balanced residential and commercial development. By 2009, the modest homes of White Plains residents were dwarfed by two $400 million 40-story-high towers built by Donald Trump and his development partners, featuring luxury condominiums, a hotel and office space. The city's projected "rebirth" stalled "halfway through" its plan, according to the New York Times, due to developers' failure to "unload" the unsold inventory of high-priced condominiums.
From 1988-1991, Bordier served on the launch team of the $1 billion telecommunications start-up, the Prodigy Interactive Personal Service. Originally founded by a partnership of IBM, CBS and Sears, it was one of the first online consumer services. Prodigy's CEO honored her with an Outstanding Achievement Award for her nationwide event marketing campaign and design of multimedia marketing materials. She later won more than a dozen awards for corporate positioning.
Bordier subsequently founded and served as managing director of one of New York's first technology incubators for Internet start-ups (1994-1998). Her efforts to create a high-tech zone in the tri-state area led Gannett Suburban Newspapers to name her to its "Who's Who" of economic development leaders in the region.
Awarded M.A. and Ph.D. degrees by the Graduate Faculties of Columbia University, she has held research, faculty and administrative positions at Columbia University, Fordham University, The New School University, Hunter College of the City University of New York and the University of Geneva in Switzerland. She also conducted applied research for the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) in Geneva.
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Interactive Voter Choice System
is a registered U.S. Patent No. 7,953,628.
System for Playing an Interactive Voter Choice Game
is a registered U.S. Patent No. 8,313,383.
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