In my last diary:Let's Roll I gave my vision of what it will take to change the system in the immediate sense.
But as I worked with my ideas, I realized that the real problem was ignorance, yours, mine and theirs, about our pols and about elections.
So my next vision, if you will, is really two visions with one goal: know our elections and our pols.
And that brings me to tout two new money making opportunities for some entrepreneur(s).
The first opportunity is trading cards. We need to know our pols better and trading cards might be the way we can go. And we can use good old Department of Homeland Security Color Coding System (new version!) for these pols.
Along that line of getting to know our politicians, I have started a wiki space for MissouriPoliticians and we can add other states as well.
We might have various inputs for the voting information: Project Vote Smart Link for Sen. Claire McCaskill but it is woefully out of date. But there are other voter guides, like the "Christian Voter Guide" as well. And we could probably get some information from Sec. of States and Nate Silver's blog as well.
The object of that game is to find truly progressive candidates at every level and to have on hand, in case we ever get close to any candidate, their actual colors. We could even have tshirts promoting those cards er.. candidates that are most progressive in their voting.
And we could even have issue cards with various positions.
And that feeds into the
Political Board Game:
First you draw a candidate. This candidate is taken from a series of real candidates with real attributes or you could, as in virtual games, create an avatar.
Then you have a territory that you are campaigning within and the territory is created by matching one of the real municipalities or districts or state(s), depending on the level. The voting area is made up of x% liberals, x% moderates, x% conservatives.
You start by running for School Board! In later games you can be "promoted" to local and then state and then federal.
Note that you have already created your avatar before you picked a municipality. There may be some mismatches in who you represent and who you are.
If you go with an avatar, you will have to choose an “appearance” card. This will give you some additional weightings such as charisma points and attractiveness scale. Charisma is always a plus. On fundraising, charisma acts as a percentage point increase. Attractiveness scale is a weighting used to moderate the fundraising. It will not add to the fundraising, but it may not take away as much.
Then you draw 5 cards from a big pile of cards. These cards represent
Endorsements: Labor, Local activist groups, Newspapers, Former Pols, Higher office pols, think tanks, religious leaders, Statewide activist groups, Nationwide Activist groups, Companies, Blogs, Minority Groups, celebrity endorsement
Special events at the election: National election at same time, referendums for culture issues, referendums for progressive issues, traumas that might occur before the election, and corruption of the election process. A special event where you or your opponent can address a large number of people and it is organized by the community and it is not a hit on your campaign.
Third party efforts – this is not just a literal third party but a third party represented by a “faux news” group pushing their agenda, or a Koch brothers push for a corporate agenda, or a lobbying group representing some pov whether favorable or unfavorable or even a church group pushing its agenda.
Hot issues where feeling is running strong: Failures, Cutbacks, Mismanagement, Malfeasance, scandals, bad economy, etc.
Opponents Cards: Computer generated opponent will also draw cards.
The first step is to create your “elevator” speech. What can you say in 30 seconds to convince another that you are a viable and valuable candidate for this office? If more than one or two players are involved, then the others get to vote on your speech and you get to vote on theirs. If there are people around who are not playing the game, even better. You can give them the speech and tally their feedback using a 1-5 system. That tally will be a weighted measure for future fund raising.
The next step on the board is fund raising and this block is repeated every 4 -5 blocks. At each step you can pick a favorable card that will give you a favorable result, but your opponent will also give you a card, if they have one, that is unfavorable. They must give you a card favorable or unfavorable. And each of you will draw another card. Your two cards will be evaluated by the computer and a result will be calculated for your fund raising totals. Say you had labor endorsements. That gives you a guarantee of a little funding from the labor pack and a data base that you can use to solicit more funds. If the unfavorable card given you is a “hot issue” card it will depend on how the voters’ pov and your avatar’s pov are in alignment. If the majority of the voters are not in alignment with your pov, then your fund raising goal is raised by what ever percentage is needed to overcome that disadvantage.
Right after the fund raising block is the goal block. Initially goals are not huge. You need money for building a data base, creating a web site, sending out mailers, and, if you are promoted to higher than school board, you need to hire a campaign manager. The computer will calculate how much funding you have accumulated based on your cards and the weightings. If you make the amount, you can then move on to the next block.
From there on, dice can be used. But you cannot go past a goal block unless you have adequate funding. If you do not have the funds for the goal, you must return back to the fund raising block.
Other blocks on the board:
Policy – this is another “elevator” speech outlining some policy you wish to promote in the position you are hoping to earn by being elected. The policy has to embody 1) actual things you wish to accomplish 2) couched in such a way that the majority of folks in your election area will embrace it and think of you as “their person”. Again, this is subject to peer review and the weighting will be added to your fund raising ability.
Events – this can be a good event – fair, community concert, etc. that will allow you to meet and greet and speechify to voters. It can be a bad event, scandal, trauma or such. Again, you and your opponent will supply the cards.
Debate – If you reach this block, or you opponent does, each of you will create a short speech and it will be evaluated just as the “elevator” and “policy” speeches.
By the end of the game, you will have accumulated a certain amount of ability to reach voters. The funding enables you to advertise, mail, and give yourself visibility to your voters.
The last block then is election. Special election features such as referendums will pull certain voting population blocks out for the vote. And that will weight your voting results. Fundraising efforts will enable GOTV efforts and that will give a weighting as well. Endorsement cards here will help push you over the top, if they provide help with gotv efforts. This last block will allow you to use all of your good cards. If you have reached this block before your opponent, your opponent can now use all of his “bad” cards and give them to you. The tabulation of votes will take into account your ability to reach “like-minded” and “independent” voters. There are a percentage of voters on both sides who will only vote their party’s ticket and are not reachable by you unless hell freezes over. But, even so, if you have played your cards right you might get enough cross-over votes and get a really good margin of victory.