Author: super_sheriff

I found a version of the original Voter’s Revenge source code on my laptop, which I’ve now uploaded to a new github repository @ https://github.com/sldev2/VR . (Note that this project began from a clone of an open source project called Mvc5IdentityExample.)

I probably have a more current version of the code, somewhere in a disk in storage, as I made some modifications to demonstrate the basic functionality using a date in the past when the data was current. (I posted an article about this on codeproject.com called “Allow Users to Selectively Override your Website’s Default Date” ). The bits indicated in my article are not in the code, so for sure it’s not the very last thing I worked on.

At present, I don’t think it’s worth it trying to dig up the very latest source code.

I’ve abandoned this version of the project long ago, and have since re-imagined it, though I’ve done no coding on a new version. I’m posting this mostly because any programmers who might get interested in the re-imagined version might make use of the database as a starting point, whose structure can be reproduced using the ‘modelBuilder’ calls.

“Recruit, recruit, recruit”

The “prime directive” in Star Trek was to not interfere in the evolution of planetary civilizations.

Posses should also be mindful of a prime directive – namely, the need to grow the posse, since it’s political muscle scales with size of membership. We can adopt the slogan “Recruit, Recruit, Recruit” to express this idea. Even after a posse reaches a critical mass where it can more or less guarantee the removal of an incumbent during their next primary, it’s important to keep growing the posse. The reason being that a removal in no way guarantees that a better replacement gets elected, and a larger accountability group of local citizens is required to coalesce around a primary challenger to therefore all but guarantee a primary victory for this challenger. In purple districts and states, we can easily anticipate a yet larger accountability group membership milestone, which is a size large enough to all but guarantee a victory in a general election.

“Accountability group” is introduced, here, instead of just “posses”, because posses (at least as originally conceived) were punitive in nature, and I’ve described them as “negative vote blocs”. (More recently, I’ve introduced 3 flavors of posses, including supportive posses; however I anticipate more reform coming from watchdog and adversarial posses.) However, when the public is more integrated into large enough accountability groups, they will naturally want to act as a positive vote blocs, conduct unofficial votes before official elections and primaries to determine a champion to rally around, and install new elected officials that they are confident of being better than the bum they intend to throw out.

Voter’s Revenge is an opinionated tool, and thus will try to steer posses in the direction of public facing payback actions (which result from redline violations), which simultaneously exploit opportunities to “recruit, recruit, recruit” during the payback action. Nevertheless, there is some freedom involved in choosing payback actions, so having “recruit, recruit, recruit” in mind, is important.

Posses can be used wisely or foolishly. E.g., payback actions need to aim for a goldilocks zone of aggressiveness. It’s easy to see that most actions by the public towards Congress critters are not nearly aggressive enough. These are actions such as emails, petitions, faxes, etc. Is your Representative terribly concerned about his constituents’ emails? Compared to how many campaign contributions he got that week? Probably not. On the other hand, we have seen some lefty activists, in recent years, engage in tactics that are too aggressive, and even illegal.

So, in considering payback actions, let’s say that, against, well, my recommendations, they engage in typical email campaigns. Such campaigns have the same target (e.g., Congressman), but the emails fail the “recruit, recruit, recruit” principle. Therefore, it is hoped that Pareto Principle considerations prevail, and the email campaigns are either abandoned, or at least viewed as merely part of the 80% that are not expected to yield the same relative benefit towards the end goal.

The new requirement of QR codes, which provide links to specific posses, are sort of a no-brainer, and shouldn’t require much explanation. They are used for providing, e.g., links to restaurant menus. Because a posse will live in a distinct corner on a website, it doesn’t suffice just to provide the votersrevenge.com website, along with items to search for. (As a backup means of finding a specific posse, that is fine, and anticipated.)

Voter’s Revenge was originally conceived as primarily an adversarial tool. Posses were expected to be either downright hostile; or else all business, where the reining in of elected officals – the posse targets – was the norm. It was expected that incumbents tend to be sell-outs, even if they made the right noises during their election runs, and the posses were there mostly to punish them if they strayed too far. The posses were to be public-facing, with communication to posse targets something like this: “Your next redline is 3 weeks from now. Our posse is now up to 82,000, which will vote you out of office in your next primary if you cross our redline (by not meeting the demand.) Well, we have a few hours left today to grow our posse by another 1,000 folks. So, ta ta, have a nice day.” In other words, in my initial conception of things, relationships were cursory, while potential political threats were primary. The posses were not about either supplications or shmoozing (relationship). Instead, their spirit was along the lines of Frederick Douglas’ famous quotes “Power conceded nothing without a demand” and  “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

I’ve since realized that it’s advantageous to make the sentiments of the posses towards their targets explicit, and to broaden the expected sentiments allowed, especially for “supportive” posses. See https://www.votersrevenge.info/?p=145   So much so that the expectation of the posse is to promote their target, acting like a sort of push poll, wherein the the redline demand is a softball, sure to be met. The “payback” of having the target respect the redline is also public-facing, but this time the “payback” is a favorable message, intended to educate the public of something done right, which (likely) should be rewarded during the target’s next primary or election. A supportive posse will typically reinforce an incumbent or candidate’s strength.
 

Now, cue this David Knight interview of Connor Boyack, who led the effort to successfully change over 100 laws in Utah “covering a wide range of areas such as privacy, government transparency, property rights, drug policy, education, personal freedom, and more.” Hey, that’s 100+ more laws that I have gotten changed in New Jersey. :-). Boyack’s efforts are focussed at the state level, and he relates the story of a principled friend, Mike Lee, who was elected to the US Senate, but has been “woefully unsuccessful”. Boyack’s methodology involved groups of citizens meeting with the state official on a friendly basis and nurturing a continuing relationship. He also recommends taking state legislators to lunch.

(15:26 – 17:30)

Number 2 – take a politician to lunch. Don’t do it during their busy season. So if the legislatures’s in session, then maybe wait a while Because everybody’s got to eat and you’ve got to think gthrough how can you create value for them.

So, if I was to do this, I would find my state representative on the website, see what bills he’s been running, you know what he’s been working on and I would email him or text him and say, “hey I really love this bill that you’re working on. Super important. I’ve been talking with some friends of mine, and some stakeholders. I’ve got some ideas for how you can actually improve this, or something else related you can do, or whatever. Could I take you to lunch?” And very often they will say “yes”. Now they will say yes even more if you are known as a connector. So if you do Step 1 and then Step 2, the cottage meeting and the  networking and then you start making those requests, then you will be more successful. This doesn’t take a ton of time, hardly any time, but this all boils down to relationships.  That is what drives this  business. This is why lobbyists are so successful. You need to foster relationships. When you just show up to the capital, to city hall, when you raise your fist and say “AH AH AH AAAAH” you know, “I don’t like this” they all know that you’re just going to speak your mind and go back to sleep. And they don’t have to pay (any attention). You’re not going to be there every week, you’re not going to be watch-dogging them, whatever, right? But if you have relationship, then when I text a legislator “Hey, I have questions about that vote you just made” or “hey, are you going to work on that bill” they know that I’m out there not only watching them but talking to a ton of people because they know that I’m a connector, that I’m not going away, that I have a lot of relationships, that can be helpful to them, or harmful to them. So the average citizen, you want to get involved, you want to start developing some relationships, and these are just a few of the easy, low cost, low time ways that the average citizen could start to do it.

So, this contradicts my original vision of Voter’s Revenge, but it’s all to the best. Boyack’s scenario is how we would like elected officials to behave, and which I’d come to view as unrealistic. It apparently IS (generally) unrealistic, at the Federal level. Consider how Ralph Nader, who used to have many an open door to Congressional offices, came to have those doors shut, as the lobbyists took over Washington.  I don’t want to go searching for whatever interview or talk of Nader’s told this story, but given that the book When Corporations Rule the World first came out in 1995, we can assume that the era of easy access by public citizen Ralph Nader was over by 1995.       

Well, wherever it happens to be still possible to have such a non-financially driven (non-corrupt) relationship with an elected official, it should be facilitated, even if the very name Voter’s Revenge implies it can’t be.

It’s expected that SweetTalkers will be a small minority of any given posse, as politicians can’t be spending every lunch with a SweetTalker. They will function as ambassadors of a posse, and update their posse members with details of personal meetings with the posse target. It’s also expected that

1. Adversarial posses won’t have any sweettalkers – only watchdog and supportive posses
2. As per Boyack and Ralph Nader, while the new spec will call for sweettalkers at all levels of government, nobody should hold their breath for initial, great success of sweettalkers at the Federal level, only State Level and below. (Though we can imagine that, if Voter’s Revenge begins to get scalps at the Federal level, then Congressional lawmakers will become much more amenable to schmoozing with ordinary citizens, as compared to favoring well-heeled lobbyists.)
3. As per my experience training for my ill-fated, 1/2 day stint as a telemarketer 40 years, ago, people in MidWest and Southern states are far more polite and patient than from other parts of the country. So much so, that they may not say “no”, even though they will never say “yes”. Boyack is from Utah, which I presume is much friendlier and patient than NJ. So, the effectiveness of sweetalkers will vary according to a number of factors, including culture, and the personalities involved. There are 350 million citizens in the US, so sweettalking should be at least tried at for all non-adversarial posse types, and levels of government. Hence, VR will enable this role for all non-adversarial posse types (i.e., pro and watchdog posses) and levels of government.

Connor Boyack personal website is: https://connorboyack.com/

His activist website is: https://libertas.org/

I floated this idea, years ago before the Voter’s Revenge website was created. (E.g., I mentioned it in 2011 at dailykos.com, here.) – Of course, there are already candidate pipelines and vetting mechanisms, for at least some mainstream Democrats and Republicans.   E.g., Barack Obama’s experience meeting vital, well heeled Democratic donors, before he was fast-tracked for President, was described in the blog BlackAgendaReport.com. Though I failed to find the specific, relevant article I’d read there, after a brief search, you can get the flavor of this vetting from this quote from Awakening From Obama’s Seductive Spell.

However, contrary to complaints from a few disgruntled liberals, Obama isn’t a morally compromised, spineless individual, betraying his most cherished ideals. Quite the contrary, Street documents via exhaustive examples that Obama has been consistently to the right of center throughout his public career and is doing what he was groomed to do. It was the combination of a brilliant marketing strategy, beguiling rhetoric, and something approaching a cult of personality that put him over the top in 2008.

Why has all this occurred? You won’t find it in high school civics (or college) textbooks but the truth is that one doesn’t obtain the nomination for president without first being carefully vetted by our political, media, and corporate masters. Or, as Street quotes Lawrence Shoup’s apt phrase, this is the “hidden primary of the ruling class.” Only after being reassured about the candidate’s enthusiasm for advancing the corporate domestic and foreign agenda, does the funding and media attention begin to materialize and this is precisely what occurred with Obama.

Apparently, details of the Obama vetting by the rich will be found in Paul Street’s book The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power

While the Republican and Democratic parties have their donor base vetting processes to generate the ‘right’ candidates, Voter’s Revenge is intended to primarily to enable sincere populists and reformers, not deceptively branded neo-liberals like Obama.

Briefly, a Candidate Pipeline is a web portal that serves as a repository for people who believe they may want a career in government as an elected official. I.e., it is more for future candidates than actual, current ones. And the idea is twofold:

1. Give the future candidates a place to blog about political issues; plus aggregate reports and links about the doings (speeches, debates, town halls, meetups, activist activities, etc.) of the future candidates. The future candidates can thus become known to constituencies over a period of years
2. Make electoral threats to current politicians more credible, by decreasing the friction needed to run challengers. An elected official may scoff if they are “in the money” and well entrenched, when told that some of their constituents (i.e., a posse) will likely vote them out of power if some redline demand is not met. VERSUS receiving the same electoral threat, along with admiring words for 2 or 3 potential challengers who have been building a political legacy which is documented on the Candidate Pipeline for years, and are already known and respected by significant portions of their constituency.

So, we can conceive of a Candidate Pipeline as a stand-alone, independent political tool, just like we can conceive of Voter’s Revenge as a stand-alone, independent political tool; and furthermore, that both tools could and should be’ joined at the hip’ via embedding links and even content from the Candidate Pipeline within the Voter’s Revenge app.

Finally, we can point to a useful analogy. Having a stable of credible future candidates at the ready is similar to have well trained and maintained peacetime armed forces with logistical capability near – or within striking distance – of a potential future foe. It takes many years to spin up a significant, and capable armed forces. If you go to war with an inferior army, which is also at a logistical disadvantage from the get-go, then you should expect to lose your war.

VR is a neutral tool, that can be used by people of any political persuasion, though it’s intended to fortify populists’ (left, right, and middle-of-the-road) political muscle, as opposed to non-populists. It can also be used smartly or dumbly. An example of a dumb use is on a “lesser evil” basis, which is apparently organically used by most American voters. This diary is a reprint of a diary I posted at dailykos.com in 2011. I am not reprinting the comments, so readers may want to check out the original.

I’ve long thought of writing a diary called “If the CIA is smart enough to hire a political game theorist, then why aren’t progressives?” Indeed, I’ve threatened to write such a diary.

This diary may or may not substitute for such a diary, due to overlap. We shall see.

A more accurate title for this diary is certainly “The Albert Einstein of Political Game Theory on the Stupidity of Lesser Evilist Voting”. Who is this Albert Einstein / Jesus Christ? Well, none other than the political game theorist Bueno de Mesquita, who was featured in the New York Time in an article called Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb?. A brief intro to the subject of political game theory can be viewed online here.

The reason that de Mesquita is better compared to Einstein, is because he’s a smart guy. The NY Times article tells us:

among national-security types and corporate decision makers, he is even better known for his prognostications. For 29 years, Bueno de Mesquita has been developing and honing a computer model that predicts the outcome of any situation in which parties can be described as trying to persuade or coerce one another. Since the early 1980s, C.I.A. officials have hired him to perform more than a thousand predictions; a study by the C.I.A., now declassified, found that Bueno de Mesquita’s predictions “hit the bull’s-eye” twice as often as its own analysts did.

(emphasis mine)

However, the comparison to Jesus Christ makes for a catchier diary title, and also expresses my hope that progressives (and voters in general) might be saved from their disempowered state, by voting more intelligently. And bravely, for those who are too afraid of splitting the vote of the legacy party candidate that they are more closely aligned with, thus potentially handing a victory to the “evil other” legacy party. For progressives, they tend to be hamstrung by being afraid not to vote for a Democrat, no matter how bad. An analogous situation holds for a good deal of the Republican base, who may well be afraid of throwing a Republican under the bus due to fears of electing a dastardly Democrat.

Because I don’t want to spend a lot of time writing a polished diary, I will simply do the following:

First, I point to the unpleasant discussion I had with Mike Hersh, who wrote a blog diary on the Progressive Democrats of America website, called The High Cost of Voting for Spoilers, which prompted me to email Bueno de Mesquita.

Secondly, I quote my email to Bueno de Mesquita, verbatim.

Thirdly, I quote de Mesquita’s replay, verbatim, which he has given me permission to do.

Fourthly, I’ll mention that interesting discussions and debates on voting strategy, as regards jeffroby’s proposal for a Full Court Press, were had at openleft.com and firedoglake.com. Google is your friend. The Full Court Press (FCP) was a plan to alter the political dynamics of progressives who vote as Democrats, and hopefully spark the beginning of an effective progressive movement. Basically, the FCP would try and enlist 435 challengers in Democratic primaries for the House of Representatives, who could be minimalist candidates, whose minimal requirement was to appear in Democratic debates and argue the FCP’s progressive platform.

Fifthly, I’ll mention that Anthony Noel of the New Progressive Alliance (NPA) participated in the discussion comments of The High Cost of Voting for Spoilers. NPA embraces an aggressive voting strategy, which eschews lesser evilism. (I’m afraid that it will be too aggressive when it starts pursuing Congressional races, but that is another matter.)

Sixthly, I want to state that I sincerely hope that sincere political groups of diverse ideological stripes will avail themselves of individuals like de Mesquita, to hone more effective voting strategies. De Mesquita, himself, does not consult on elections (in the US, I presume), but I’m sure that individuals with his sort of political game theory background can be found.

My Email to Bueno de Mesquita

Dear Mr. De Mesquita:

I have mentioned your work many times at progressive blogs and forums, and I find it amazing and depressing that there is generally no support amongst progressives for hiring somebody with your background. Firedoglake is a happy exception, but, until today, I knew of no other progressive place similarly disposed.

Well, an unpleasant discussion at the Progressive Democrats of America website ended with this statement by the author, who had objected to my description of PDA’s implicit voting strategy as “lesser evilism”:

“PS—please ask Bueno de Mesquita (and anyone else you think would like to help) to contact us. We’re always looking for smart, effective people. Thanks for bringing his name into the discussion.”

This was at the following web page URL:
http://www.pdamerica.org/…

So, there you go! You have an informal invitation to provisionally offer your services to the PDA (pdamerica.org). Of course, the PDA should be seeking you out, not so much the other way around, but it’s the end result that matters.

BTW, would you be kind enough to remark on my conviction that lesser evilism, as I have defined it (basically, always voting in the general election for the person from your party, no matter what he or she does; confine your electoral efforts to the primary, unless you succeed in voting out the incumbent) is a stupid voting strategy? I never studied game theory, though I’ve read a Scientific American article or two on it. I was the top chess player in my high school, but never read a chess book. I assume that I have an intuitive ability for strategy, even if I can’t calculate it, as you can.

Finally, you may be interested in some diaries of mine involving voting strategy:

Recommended Short and Long Term Voting Strategies for the Dump Obama Movement

“Dump Corporate Dems” – Going Green at the State Level, to “make Dems do it” at the Federal level

I’d just love it if you or a grad student of yours analyzed the voting strategies that I have recommended.

Sincerely,
XXXXX

Bueno de Mesquita’s Reply

Hi
You are right – it is a stupid voting strategy if you care about the outcome. A colleague and I just wrote a very technical paler on this subject.
Az a matter of policy my consulting firm does not use our capabilities to influence electoral outcomes. It sounds like this is what your colleagues are looking for. If they are interested in shaping specific policies that is another matter. Let me know if influencing legislative outcomes is of interest and if they have a consulting budget.
Thanks for thinking of me
Bruce

The current specs for Voter’s Revenge don’t allow for posses to be self-characterized (by their founders) as either (largely) supportive, (largely) adversarial, or neither of these (call this state analogous to a “watchdog”; or neutral).

This might create some reticence to join a particular posse, if the potential joiner perceives a fundamental difference in sentiment and optimism between themselves and the posse’s founder and current members. So, if the reimagined app is ever made, it will allow for explicit support characterizations. (Update: actually, the new spec will demand that the posse’s support level will be made explicit, with the default being “watchdog”)

adversarial type posse
As examples, consider an adversarial posse against Lindsey Graham, whose creation is motivated primarily by Graham’s hawkishness, which sank to the level of encouraging Russian citizens to assassinate Putin. To many a citizen, this is beyond the pale, and they can’t imagine supporting a Graham re-election, except in the rarest of circumstances. Consequently, they would be more comfortable joining a posse with this name:

“Graham is Crackers Possee”
Subtitle: “an anti-Graham, anti Ukraine War posse”
ID: “FEDGA-202-224-5972”

In such a posse, voterslingers will predominate, as compared with wranglers. In the event that Graham starts satisfying the posse’s redlines, the redlines will (likely) be made more difficult, to the point of impossible. Such a posse will be terminally soured on Graham, and wants to use the VR posse mechanism to remove Graham from office, even if he (apparently) has a change of heart.

watchdog type posse
OTOH, let’s say you’re a citizen of South Carolina, you see some redeeming social value in Graham, and merely want to curtail his warmongering. Let’s say you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, and could vote for a Graham even if he remains a warmonger.

In this case, a voter would be more comfortable joining a posse with this name:

“Stop Graham Warmongering Posse”
Subtitle: “a watchdog, anti Ukraine War posse”
ID: FEDGA-202-224-5982

In such a posse, both voteslingers and wranglers will have a significant presence.

supportive type posse
Finally, consider the case of pro-Ukrainian-war citizens of South Carolina. In this case, wranglers will predominate over voteslingers (if there are any voteslingers, at all), and the redlines will be analogous to push poll memes, designed to boost the electoral prospects of Graham, rathen than to damage them. Such a voter would be more comfortable joining a posse with the name:

“Graham – Stay Tough on Ukraine Posse”
Subtitle: “a pro-Graham, pro-Ukraine posse”
ID: FEDGA-202-224-5992

There was a brilliant essay I read many years, ago, by paleocon foreign affairs analyst of Chronicles Magazine Srdja Trifkovic, called “Iraq and the Neocons’ Pseudo-Reality”. Unfortunately, I can’t locate it online, anymore.

However, from memory, Trifkovic noted at the beginning of his essay that Saddam Hussein was an awful man, and the world would be better off if he was dead, already. His essay SHOULDN’T have needed this disclaimer/elaboration, but Trifkovic lamented that it did, because of the war frenzy and irrationality that followed the 911 attacks. Trifkovic argued against the war against Iraq, but correctly anticipated the obvious smears that would be hurled his way, for this position.

Likewise, it shouldn’t be necessary to explicitly state that Voter’s Revenge is a tool meant for legal and peaceful organizing. But, in light of the current war of the US Deep State, slimy main stream media, and Big Tech giants against Trump supporters, and populists, where, e.g., largely peaceful election protesters have been relentlessly smeared as “insurrectionists”*, it makes sense to make an obvious disclaimer, similar to Trifkovic’s. So, here it is:

Voter’s Revenge is a tool meant for legal and peaceful political organizing, only.

* You know, the 1st Amendment favoring mob that left their weapons at home, on the very first day of their “insurrection”. The Pentagon is only an 11 minute drive from the Capitol Building, so this “insurrection” seems considerably less well considered than John Brown’s attempted insurrection.

A group of progressive Democrats in Congress, referred to as “the squad”, has drawn the ire of AIPAC. This is in response to their “criticism of Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza following the Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis by Hamas”.

This is detailed in The Squad Is About to Fight for Its Political Life .

AIPAC is now tripling their budget for defeating “squad” members. “In their general elections?”, you might ask. No, AIPAC is not that stupid. This money will go towards primary challenges.

In the 2022 midterms, the Israel lobby became the largest single-issue outside spender in Democratic primaries, pouring in nearly $30 million via the super PAC the United Democracy Project, and millions more via the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC. It was an astronomical amount of money, mostly directed at knocking progressives out of the primaries, largely in open and redrawn seats. Despite there being fewer vacancies in 2024, that money figure is expected to at least triple.

While Voter’s Revenge(VR) voteslinger posses can target Congress critters for either general or primary elections, if they’re smart, they will focus their efforts moreso on the primary. If voters don’t disrupt the the electoral process early enough, they are typically left with a choice between a donor-base chosen Democrat and a donor-base chosen Republican. It’s basically too late to get a disruptive, reformist minded person elected in that election cycle, either of the Democratic or Republican brand.

VR is a neutral tool, in that it could be used by opponents on any given issue (in opposing posses, of course). It is also neutral in that it can be used stupidly or smartly; and more punitively (as originally envisioned) or even positively, as a sort of push poll. I will write about this last scenario in a future blog post.

Note: while this blog post emphasizes actions relevant to what is called the voteslinger role in Voter’s Revenge, a large part of the power of the AIPAC lobby also derives from what I’ll call training and obedience actions that are more in the realm of the wrangler role in Voter’s Revenge. See Israel Lobby Techniques Could/Should be Appropriated Into (mostly) Wrangler Actions, and a note on Political Game Theory (sketch) , especially the vpro documentary at the bottom of the page.

(I recently wrote the following – now slightly edited – to introduce a MAGA type candidate for office in NJ to this project. I mostly sought the meeting to find out why nobody seems interested in the project. Solicitations for support almost always received no answer, at all.)

The purpose of the Voter’s Revenge app is to be a “force multiplier” tool for citizens to exert a real effect on primarily incumbents (but secondarily for first-time candidates; and also members of the administrative state, who don’t stand for election).

An analogy:

I used to work for a small business that delivered food from various local restaurants. This was 20 years ago, before doordash, ubereats, etc.  We would take orders over the phone, frantically write them down, and add up totals with a calculator.

I wrote an order-taking program, for back-office use, which automated the process. It became much faster, and much, much less stressful. If we had had a higher call volume, it would have been useful to greatly increase throughput, with the same staff (basically 2 people).

So, what I wrote could be described as a tool which greatly increased efficiency. That is inherent in the mindset of a programmer. There is nothing terribly novel about an order-taking program. The value-added is in enhancing a common paradigm.

Likewise, I don’t consider Voter’s Revenge to be particularly sexy or techy. It is, rather, designed to facilitate and automate already-recognized political processes.

While the original version of Voter’s Revenge basically worked, I’ve completely abandoned it. A re-write using modern frameworks and techniques is all but necessary. Not least because the original version wouldn’t render in a mobile device. I basically don’t like using mobile devices for serious work, but this particular app is amenable to a mobile device. I’ve also had a few years to think about what was unappealing about the old version – even to me.

There are 2 major modes that the program is used for. Rather than trying to explain them in detail, I will instead make the case, from other sources, that each mode is well-motivated. I will just consider the most important target of dealing with incumbents. Further details can be had at the blog site votersrevenge.info.

Influencing an Elected Official  During their Election Season 

this corresponds to the voteslinger posse mode in Voter’s Revenge. voteslingers make redline demands such that the payback for violating their redline is a vote against the incumbent, in either a primary or general election

Pam Popper is a long time activist against medical tyranny.

The following is the money quote from an interview of Pam Popper by Spiro Skouras. The program is called Spiro Skouras w/ Dr. Pam Popper: The Lawsuit That Could End Covid-1984 @ https://tinyurl.com/25m55dby (on odysee.com). I highly recommend listening to the whole interview, which is only 31 minutes, long. It’s sort of obvious, I hope, that a tool like Voter’s Revenge would facilitate and accelerate the specific kind of effective organizing and activism that Pam Popper calls for.

Look, last time you won your election by a couple of thousand votes. We have almost 20,000 voters in your district, and if you don’t vote to impeach {?}, we’re going to take you out this November, and I brought a list of our registered voters so you can see that I’m serious. We could have had the impeachment done in a week, if we had that kind of thing {i.e., list of registered voters willing to vote incumbents out of office}. WE HAVE TO REALIZE, JUST LIKE WE LEARNED FROM THE LAWSUITS THAT DIDN’T WORK, WE HAVE TO LOOK AT – DECLARATIONS DIDN’T WORK; PETITIONS DON’T WORK; EMAILS DON’T WORK; AND EDUCATING POLITICIANS DOESN’T WORK WITH BIG PACKETS OF INFORMATION ABOUT HEALTH AND ALL THAT STUFF. NONE OF THAT WORKS. YOU KNOW WHAT WORKS? EDUCATION ABOUT TAKING THEM OUT. THAT’S THE LANGUAGE THEY UNDERSTAND. And so, one of the reasons we want to build this database is so that we can start undoing the medical tyranny that exists – these vaccine mandates in places like Oregon, and Washington and California and keep bad things from happening in the future. And unless we’re organized with 10’s of millions of people in our database, we will most certainly end up here, again.

(this quote from about 25:00)

Influencing an Elected Official  Outside their Election Season 

this corresponds to the wrangler posse mode in Voter’s Revenge. wranglers punish incumbents for violating their redlined demands primarily by shaming and/or educating the incumbent’s electorate about their incumbents’ failure

Although it’s much harder to influence a Congress critter who is far from elections season (imagine a US Senator 2 months into his/her 6 year term….), the means for doing so was well articulated by progressive blogger Ian Welsh. (Please be aware that, relative to strong progressive voters, the Democratic Party is not very progressive. The relationship between genuine progressives and the Democratic Party is strongly analogous to the relationship between constitutional conservatives and the Republican Party.)

From: Why Obama And Democrats Don’t Do Much of What Liberals Want (Netroots Failure: Part 2) @ https://www.ianwelsh.net/why-obama-and-democrats-dont-do-much-of-what-liberals-want-netroots-failure-part-2/

Politicians do most things because someone wants them done who can hold them accountable if they don’t do it. That includes bad things, and good things. Anyone who doesn’t understand this reality doesn’t understand even the most basic part of politics.

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Note that gays were originally ignored by Obama as well.  What did they do?  They got in Obama’s face personally, heckling him and they organized a very effective donor boycott.  As a result, they got much (but not all) of what they wanted from him.

Holding someone accountable means “inflicting pain”.  If they don’t do what you want, you must be able to do something to them they don’t like (heckling), or take away something they want (money).

Like FDL or not, the last serious attempt by left-wingers other than gays to hold Obama accountable was when they refused to go along with the Affordable Care Act if it didn’t include a public option.  FDL said “if this bill has no public option, we won’t support it.”  When it didn’t, they didn’t.  You may think that’s not a good red-line, but they had a red line.  Of course FDL, virtually alone, did not have the juice: they could not inflict enough pain or take away enough funding  or create enough bad publicity for Obama to care, especially when powerful interests (read: insurance companies), didn’t want a public option.  (For doing so, FDL was attacked by all the usual suspects on “left-wing” blogs and labelled firebaggers.)

Political power is constituted of getting people elected, getting people unelected and being able to reward or punish people for doing or not doing what you want. If you can’t do any of those things, you have no power.

This is realpolitik.

A Key Point:

Voter’s Revenge is what I call a “Negative Vote Bloc Technology”.  It is not designed to directly get anybody elected (which is what a positive vote bloc technology would be useful for.)  It is, rather, designed to either make re-election impossible (via voteslinger actions) or difficult (via wrangler actions) if the politician crosses the redlines defined by the voteslinger and wrangler posses, respectively. I have elaborated on this notion in the votersrevenge blog, Negative Vote Blocs vs. Positive Vote Blocs – which could prove more disruptive in the near future? @ https://www.votersrevenge.info/?m=201605 While there have been efforts in the direction of positive vote blocs (such as Nancy Bordier’s https://votersunited.global/ ), AFAIK, they are not having an impact. Of course, successful negative vote blocs could ease the path to successful adoption of more powerful positive vote blocs.

A Critical Point:

Wranglers should be fully acquainted with the the, ahem, loyalty engendering techniques used by the Israeli lobby. In particular, they should be aware of the utility of forcing Congress critters to affirm some declaration that is sympathetic to their posse’s goal, even if the declaration changes no laws. This process is described in the youtube documentary The Israel Lobby in the US – VPRO documentary – 2007. I link to this in my votersrevenge blog post Israel Lobby Techniques Could/Should be Appropriated Into (mostly) Wrangler Actions, and a note on Political Game Theory (sketch) @ https://www.votersrevenge.info/?p=108

In terms of the Voters’ Revenge paradigms, this means that wrangler posses, in particular, should employ similar ‘affirmational’ techniques against politicians. If, e.g., a 2 month period is settled on for setting fresh redlines, there is no guarantee that a non-symbolic, more impactful piece of legislation could be voted on during this period. In which case, the posse demand could be more along the lines of voting support for the sort of non-binding resolutions spoken of in  documentary The Israel Lobby in the US – VPRO documentary – 2007.

Furthermore, as Voter’s Revenge posses will start out with considerably less clout than the Israeli lobby, there is no guarantee that even a non-binding resolutions can be forced to a vote. (Apparently, the Israeli Lobby can force symbolic vote issues, at will.) In which case, the posses will have to settle for, e.g., an attestation that will be reproduced on both youtube (etc.) and the politician’s website.

A Final Point:

Voteslinger posses can’t vote against derelict members of the administrative state, such as Anthony Fauci, who never stand for election. However, wrangler posses could still work their magic. Indeed, it’s become increasingly clear to me, due to the covid response (which was constrained and even sabotaged by members of the bureaucracy) that posses dedicated to shaming nefarious non-elected individuals into reputational oblivion are just as important as those targeting elected officials. Punitive wrangler actions directed against bureaucrats carry the same “teach the public” potential as those directed against elected politicians. Furthermore, if the wrangler posses are loud enough, elected officials will also feel some of the reflected heat.

(If anybody doubts that the public health related bureaucracies were dysfunctional, they can do worse than start their research by listening to evolutionary biologist Brett Weinstein, interviewed by Freddi Sayers of the Unherd Youtube channel, in Bret Weinstein: I will be vindicated over Covid )