Triangulation: Reward, Revisit, Replace – the 3 Rs of Politics

Welcome to part 10 of our ongoing 12 part series where I can share with youwhat we envision our state and country can look like through our work with Unite America!

In case you are joining us for the first time here’s what we’ve covered so far in our series:

Our main forms of political leverage were:

• Votes / volunteers – our ability to rally people behind an anti-corruption     candidate is the lynch pin of our strategy.  Securing votes and fielding    people who can make calls and knock on doors are immensely valuable
• Money / marketing – this is a distant second but still important because,     as of today, raising funds is still of prime importance to our political leaders.    (We do want to fight the UNDUE influence of money, though, to be clear!)    Money can also be in the form of marketing, e.g. sending out positive    mailers on our own as opposed to direct contributions to the candidate.
• Information / introductions- having credible polling into how their    constituents might feel or insight into a particular issue can also be of    value to our politicians.  Providing candidates access to experienced people   who can offer strategic and tactical advice as the race unfolds will also    be greatly appreciated.
• Resolutions / referendums – these aren’t our primary focus but may have   their place as they can send strong signals to politicians regarding how their   people will actually vote!

Today we will focus on the “T” in VOTE which stands for:

Triangulate, in terms of radio signals, describes the process where one can locate the position of a particular transmitter by knowing its signal strength as measured from three different places.

Technically, we will be doing the reverse (but that wouldn’t make our acronym for “VOTE” work so humor me!)

By understanding the position of a politician (with respect to our political innovations to fight cronyism / corruption (as described previously here) we will know what “place” we should go to in terms of how we work with them going forward.

Here’s the process:

#1)  Reward

If a politician supports our political innovations of:

* Top 4 primaries + Ranked Choice Voting
* Impartial / independent redistricting to ensure a level playing field
* Transparency, integrity, sufficiency & accountability around money in politics
* Easy access for all eligible voters to participate in our elections

then our direction is clear – we will REWARD said politician with some form of the political leverage at our disposal that we discussed in our last newsletter (and reiterated above).

#2)  Revisit

If a politician is unsure or not familiar with our political innovations then we will REVISIT with him/her to ensure he/she has the information needed to make educated decisions around putting support behind them.  We want there to be no confusion as to why these innovations transcend party ideologies and platforms and represent the best of our what the Framers of our Constitution had in mind around the democratic process at the heart of our republic.

With repeated visits and dialogue around the merits of our political innovations we believe most “country over party” type of representatives would ultimately offer their support privately, if not publicly, regardless of which party they belong to.

#3)  Replace

We do realize that, in our current political system, there are some politicians who choose not to put “country over party” and who rationalize away the need for our political innovations.  (For example, we’ve chatted with politicians who deny that there is any gerrymandering going on at all in Wisconsin even though multiple courts and multiple, credible sources have demonstrated that, not only is gerrymandering going on here, we are, in fact, amongst the worst offenders in the entire country!  See our blog post about gerrymandering here.)

If, after an appropriate amount of time, we come to the conclusion that the incumbent politician we are talking with will not vote for our political innovations in spite of the evidence then we will seek to support a “country over party” candidate to replace this politician at some point in the future.  Obviously, we aren’t at the scale yet where we will getting involved in every race in the entire state.  So, we will be judicious about the target districts where we will engage in.  More about that in a future newsletter!

Reward.  Revisit.  Replace.

Affectionately referred to by us as the “3 Rs.”

Also, since our last newsletter it is encouraging to note the recent success by our sister chapter, Unite Virginia, as they endorsed three “country over party” candidates in their off-year primaries.  These candidates were willing to take a stand on some of our political innovations (e.g. fair and impartial redistricting) and were “rewarded” with strong support with the political leverage Unite Virginia had at their disposal.  You can read more about the win with our new strategy here!

Voila!  The 3 Rs encompass the core approach behind how we’ll:

“Triangulate our politicians”

THIS WEEK’S ACTION