A Write-in Campaign for the Swing Districts in the Congressional Election
Write-in "No More War" for Congress
Congress has two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The Senate has 1/3 of its 100 seats up for election this year. The House has all 435 of its seats up for election this year.
Because of the widespread practice called gerrymandering, where the boundaries of the Congressional districts for House of Representatives were intentionally drawn to guarantee that one or the other of the two major parties wins, only about 15 of the 435 seats will actually be up for grabs between the two dominant parties.
The outcome in the remaining 420 seats is already known. And it was designed that way by the state and national party committees of both parties.
But in those 15 districts, the margin of victory will be within two or three percent or less. And it is in this space, the space at the margins, where we can have a chance of having our voices s actually be heard.
The idea is to get enough people who are not satisfied with the 2 major party choices to write in a third option in numbers that exceed the tiny margin of victory likely in those districts.
This would show on the record that there is a cohort willing to act outside channels but within the electoral system, that is not being heard and that they’ve denied their vote to the losing candidate, thereby imposing the loss on them.
There doesn't have to be a uniform or unitary word or slogan added to the ballot. The dissatisfaction with the two alleged "choices" is the unifying point.
We suggest that voters write-in "No More War!" but "None of the Above" or even just plain "No" will register your discontent with a system where both candidates are picked by party bosses in back rooms which may no longer be "smoke-filled" but are every bit as hidden from the public as ever.
The point of this campaign is to impact at the margins, if possible, the outcome of the election in the so-called swing states, since the candidates themselves really are no different one from the other.
The real value of doing this is to show people it is possible to affect the outcome without being told how to do it by the bosses of one party or the other.
And to set the stage for the work that must come next, which is the work of organizing a political force that can make its own voice be heard clearly in the electoral process.