These potential advisors are people and organizations you could be hearing from at election time, with important information on elections big and small.
Note:
This list was originally part of the article explaining why and how a voting advice system will be rapidly adopted.
Contents
Expanded Influence of Trusted Advisors
It is worth noting that the lists below are limited to widely-known potential advisors. But the very fact that they are widely known makes it difficult for them to give targeted advice on smaller ballot items like (say) City Council in Kansas. Because they are widely known, their outreach is national, and even international. If they use their mass-media access to make a recommendation in a small race, virtually all of their followers will have no interest in it, which will tend to reduce the number of followers they have!
So one of the major benefits of a voting advice is the fact that it will allow well-known figures to pass on highly-target recommendations, without fear of a reducing their appeal. The increased outreach will certainly expand their influence. But an even greater potential benefit for society is the ability to put new potential advisors on the map, and expand their reach.
Some thoughtful person or organization could right down the block from you, right now? Or maybe a few streets over, or slightly farther away. They might have really useful advice to share! But how will you find each other?
The voting advice system makes it possible. If you trust well-know advisors A, B, C, and someone else does too, then there is a strong overlap in advisors you both trust. If the other person also trusts local advisor X, then the system knows enough to recommend X as a potential advisor. Or perhaps that other person is potential advisor X. Either way, you get a trusted advisor for local ballot items you didn’t have before.
And as their number of followers grows, so does their influence — which means when person Y comes along with a good idea, they want to convince advisor X of the value of that idea. In that situation, person X becomes a “key” to unlocking the vote, which gives them a certain amount of power.
(Of course, as a source of voting advice, there will be the inevitable attempt to sway their opinion with gifts and bribes. But if they succumb, it will weaken the level of trust they enjoy. In fact, it could become immediately apparent that they have been swayed when their advice suddenly falls outside the norm of other trusted advice.)
Potential Advisors
This list of potential advisors identifies people and organizations who could be giving you thoughtful advice at election time — people and organizations whose advice-feed you might well subscribe to, if you had the opportunity. The question is: How many of them do you hear from at election time now, with advice that is relevant to you? And how many of them do you wish you were hearing from, when it counts?
Major Organizations
- California Clean Money Campaign
- Centre for Public Integrity
- Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org)
- Center for Science in the Public Interest
- Citizens Against Public Waste
- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
- Congressional Report Cards
- Credo Mobile (progressive phone company)
- Common Cause
- Daughters of the American Revolution & other sisterhood organizations
- Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC)
- Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) — or the Republican equivalent
- Emily’s List
- Greenpeace
- KCRW’s Left, Right, and Center
- League of Conservation Voters
- League of Women Voters
- Masons & other brotherhood organizations
(They should be particularly interested in the prospect, given that they worked so hard to create an egalitarian society in the U.S.) - MoveOn.org
- No Agenda with Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak
- NPR’s Intelligence Squared (one of 19 major political podcasts)
- Our Revolution
- Political Parties (Green Party, Libertarian Party, Democratic Socialists, other…)
- Public Citizen
- Rootstrikers
- Sierra Club
- Sunlight Foundation
- WatchDog.org
- Whole Foods
- Your Church
- Your Union
Well-Known Politicians
- Bernie Sanders (democratic socialist)
- Elizabeth Warren
Well-Known Analysts
- David Brooks
- David Leonhardt
- Dr. Lawrence Lessig
- Mark Shields
- Paul Krugman
- Richard Wolfe (Democracy at Work)
- Robert Reich
Major-Market Media
- Chicago Tribune
- L.A. Times
- Miami Herald
- New York Times
- San Francisco Chronicle
- Washington Post
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