The Internet to the Rescue . . . of the Public Health Insurance Option

Like many supporters of health care reform, I find it discouraging when core initiatives such as the public health insurance option get killed early in the process by moneyed special interests that essentially control Congress. It's even more disheartening when our elected representatives openly acknowledge the situation: Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, in a recent radio interview, said (of the banking lobby) in plain English: " . . . they own the place [Congress]."

Is there no way that (We) The People can regain control of The Congress?

Actually, there is. Right now, go to www.ioparty.com and make a good-faith pledge that you will not vote for any candidate for Federal office in 2010 who does not support health care reform legislation that includes a public health insurance option.

This voluntary, advance commitment of your vote is called a "No" Vote Pledge (NVP). As you and other voters cast your NVP's, the Web site displays the accrued totals by electoral jurisdiction for all to see - especially campaigning politicians, who will see how many votes they'll lose if they don't support a public health insurance option. When the Web site shows that a majority of voters in a given jurisdiction have pledged their "No" votes, it says to the politicians of that jurisdiction: either join with the majority of your constituents on this issue, or prepare to leave office (don't even bother running in your next election; voters have committed in advance to remove you).

Is it realistic to think that a simple, open-source voting tool like NVP can compete effectively with the moneyed lobbyists and campaign contributors who have long dominated the Congressional agenda?

it's not only realistic, some say it's inevitable. The Internet has revolutionized virtually every transactional activity in modern society (banking, shopping, information retrieval, etc.), and enormous efficiencies have been achieved in these fields. Our democracy, however, is one transactional activity that has remained inefficient, opaque, and dominated by middlemen - a poor situation to be sure, but one that is ripe for transformation. Numerous Prophets of Cyberspace (including Doug Rushkoff and others) have in fact argued that such a transformation in our democracy is inevitable - a necessary consequence of the open-source nature of the Internet.

Is the issue-directed "No" Vote Pledge Campaign described above the long-awaited Web innovation that will lead our democratic transformation? What is the great efficiency it will bring to the process?

A detailed analysis of these and related questions (including an examination of the crucial reasons why NVP Campaigns are far more effective than traditional signature petitions) is presented in essay form at www.amendment-28.com/osd2-0.pdf. The essential conclusion: successful NVP Campaigns (ones that attract a majority of voters in a given jurisdiction) can effectively wrest control of specific issues from Congress and return that control to the electorate. The efficiency achieved: NVP Campaigns establish a direct link between voters and their representatives with respect to specific issues -- bypassing completely the filtering, dilution and manipulation of issues by politicians and political parties, whose agendas are typically driven by their major campaign contributors.

If you want a public health insurance option, you can have it: Just Vote "No".

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future