the Site

PODVoters: Introduction

The current political environment isn't going to stop war, value competence, teach effective conflict resolution to our children, nor protect the environment, ourselves, and our world.

We're sick of complaining. We're sick of seeing failure after failure from the current mass-media based election system.

POD is both the Party of the Disillusioned and the Party of the Determined. We're disillusioned with the current two-party system and its money-driven nomination and election process. We're not content with the two party system. We're not content criticizing it, the current political environment, the current administration or other politicians. We're not content having our opinion only heard. We want more. We are taking action, and together we can realize genuine change. We the PODVoters are determined to wrest control of our country back to us, the citizens of the United States.

We are entitled to genuine choice as to the stewardship of our country, our government and our national resources. We can achieve all of that and realize the just government we envision in our optimistic moments.

PODVoters: a Better System

PODVoters is a better system. Using the internet to disseminate information about our candidates and to coordinate our entire nomination process, we remove the need for money-driven, influence-driven, and mass media-driven political campaigns.

Instead, we host an open process in which every vote counts and everyone participates. The PODvoters nomination system is ad-free, money-free, and principle-heavy and integrity-heavy. It's a system every voter in the country can participate in and exercise a voice.

Together, We Will Make Our Votes Count! Join PODVoters.

The Process

PODVoters Depends on Engaged, Active Members

When you join PODVoters, you agree to vote for the candidate who wins the PODVoters nomination process (whether or not you personally supported that candidate in nomination voting). Our success in winning elections critically depends on our solidarity.

To be a PODVoter, you should be prepared to be an active voter and active participant in the whole process. We expect and require our members collectively to research candidates, to read the achievements and goals candidates, to participate in creative policy making and to productively resolve conflicts between fellow PODVoters and all Americans. Much more is on the way in terms of how you can participate. If you'd like to volunteer for PODVoters immediately, please visit our Volunteer page.

PODVoters Nomination Process

The PODVoters nomination process is run entirely online through our site. The nomination process is open, transparent, ad and money-free. Our rules are set up to ensure this. The process itself consists of multiple rounds of voting in which candidates are ranked in order of preference. In each round, candidates are eliminated until we are left with a single candidate who will represent the most liked/least disliked of all the candidates.

All votes are search-able via the site and public so you can count and check for yourself that your vote was registered and that the vote count was accurate! Due to this transparency, there's no possibility of changing votes or miscounting and hanging chads!

Key Candidates' Rules

No fundraising. Candidates are disallowed from spending virtually any money on self-promotion.

Vow of Poverty. Candidates must commit to an effective "vow of poverty" in and out of office-to be a PODVoters candidate, one must accept limits on one's earnings for the rest of one's life. We believe public service means public service and not a life of trading political celebrity for vast wealth after leaving office.

Transparency and Full Disclosure while in office. While in office, PODVoters candidates agree to summarize the key effects of every bill they vote on as well as key reasons for their votes.

Candidates take an oath to uphold the PODVoters principles.

No soundbytes.

No spin advisors feeding the candidate rhetoric.

Volunteers research the candidates' professional and personal accomplishments. Through various tests, we evaluate the candidate's integrity, knowledge, logical reasoning skills, and ability to get things done.

We will use all funds we obtain through donations (we're in the process of becoming an "official" not-for-profit organization) to fund ideas and tasks for the candidates to accomplish to gauge how well they can get start initiatives and make them succeed.

As a PODVoter, You Commit Your Vote to the PODVoters Process and Principles

Every PODVoter commits his or her vote to the winner of the PODVoters online nomination process. This ensures that our vote is not diluted. With an online nomination process, we can take money, prime time tv soundbytes, and a lot more OUT of the election process. With a shared set of principles that are neither right nor left but simply true, every PODVoter is confident that differences with the winning candidate are minor.

When you join PODVoters, you commit your vote to whoever wins the PODVoters nomination process. We must be in solidarity once we have a candidate-so to be a POD voter you must commit your vote to whichever candidate wins our nomination process.

The Nomination Process

To ensure that we collectively select the candidate least disliked and most liked by all members, we have a multiple-round voting process based on preference rankings.

Here's a run-down of how the process basically works.

In cases where more than twenty candidates have been nominated, we begin with preliminary rounds. The purpose of the preliminary rounds is to allow voters to focus on a particular group of candidates--it's impossible for individual voters to adequately research forty or fifty candidates!

In each preliminary round, the candidates are randomly divided into groups of no more than ten. Each POD voter is randomly assigned to allocate between three to five votes (depending on the group size) to members of the group. The top half vote-getters in each group continue to the next round (either preliminary or ranking). If after the first preliminary round, there are still more than twenty candidates, another preliminary round is taken up...this repeats until there are twenty or fewer candidates.

Once we're down to twenty or fewer candidates, we have ranking rounds. In ranking rounds, PODvoters give each candidate an integer score between 10 (very highly preferred) to 1 (not at all qualified/preferred). We then sum the scores for each candidate. Half of the initial candidates, those with the highest sums (the lower the sum, the more liked the candidate is by PODVoters), are eliminated. We then proceed to another round until we're left with one candidate

For example, if we begin with forty candidates, we'd first have a preliminary round. The candidates would be divided into four groups of ten each and members would be assigned a single group to which to allocate their five votes. The five leading vote-getters in each of the four groups makes it to the next round. The second round, since we're down to twenty candidates, would be a ranking round. All PODVoters would give each candidate a score between 1 to 10, and the ten candidates with the highest scores would proceed to the third round. The third round would be another ranking round in which voters have a chance to change their ranking of candidates after which we'd be left with five candidates. After another ranking round, we'd have 3 candidates, then 2 candidates and finally a single candidate who's the winner and the PODVoters Candidate.

If you'd like to nominate yourself or someone else, please visit our Nominations page.