PETITION
TO THE STATES
OF AMERICA

To the Honourable Legislatures of the Several States:

We, the Independents of these United States — having no master, no party banner, no donor's coin to purchase our way upon any ballot — do approach you in the Manner of Petition, as our Forefathers once approached a King across the Water, with the same spirit of desperate hope that the governed may still move the governors.

For we find ourselves, in this present year, under a yoke most grievous: the yoke of the Two-Party Dominion. Two Factions — calling themselves Parties — have, in the space of two centuries, seized dominion over every election, every legislature, every vote of conscience in this Republic. They have made of our democracy an inheritance, passing the throne from one royal house to the other, so that the People may choose only which House shall tyrannize them next.

The evils of this Dominion are many, and we set them forth:

• Gerrymandering. The Party in Power draws the district lines to guarantee its own perpetual reign. The voter does not choose the representative — the representative chooses his voters, and the People are thus made subjects of the Cartographer's art.
• Safe Seats and Non-Election. In the greater number of districts, the result is known before a single vote is cast. The Party's nominee is selected not by the People but by a small body of the Party faithful in a primary — and the general election is mere ceremony. The People are told: you may vote for our candidate or his opponent; but neither owes you anything.
• Donor Override. He who would stand for office must first raise money from those with money to give. The donor does not give because he shares the people's interest — he gives because he has interests the representative must serve. The People's business is thus placed in trust to the wealthy, and the poor person's voice is priced beyond their means.
• The Loyalty Oath. Once seated, the representative is expected to vote as the Party commands, on pain of being denied Party support at the next election. Their conscience, their constituents, their oath to the Republic — all are subordinated to the Party whip. They are not a representative of the People; they are a soldier in the Party's army.
• The Party Stamp. The ballot itself — sacred instrument of self-governance — bears the Party's mark beside every name. The voter must choose: do I vote for the Party I despise less, or do I waste my vote on a woman or man with no letter beside their name? The two factions have occupied the ballot as a landlord occupies a commons, and no one may pass without tribute to one or the other.
• The Permanent Campaign. The Parties do not rest. In every season — election or none — they are organizing, selecting, training, and positioning their forces. The citizen who would participate in governance must first be captured by one Party or the other, and upon that capture depends their voice in the government of themselves.

We ask you: what manner of Republican Form of Government is this? Where the district is carved to fit the Ruler, where the representative is a soldier, where the ballot is a toll road, and where the People are made to choose between two arrangements of the same tyranny?

"By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." — James Madison, The Federalist No. 10, November 23, 1787

Madison defined faction for all time in 1787 — and the Two-Party Dominion is the largest and most powerful faction in American history. It acts on common interests adverse to the rights of other citizens and to the permanent interests of the community. And we tell you: the patience of the Independent — of the person who refuses to kneel to either faction — is nearly spent.

We proceed, therefore, to show what the Fathers themselves thought of this arrangement.

It is said, by those who defend the Two-Party Dominion, that our Forefathers themselves established the two-party system, that it is as old as the Republic and as such deserves our reverence. This is a falsehood — and a deliberate one. The Fathers did not create parties. They feared them. And in their writings, preserved for us to read, they left a clear record of their alarm and their prescription.

John Adams, who bore the office of our second President, wrote those words in correspondence, watching party machinery consume the virtue of republics from within. Note that he calls party spirit the worst of all tyrannies — and places it above even monarchy, which the Fathers had just overthrown in revolution.

"It is the interest and duty of a wise People to discourage and suppress party spirit and party Maxims, as well as ambition and corruption in the People." — James Madison, letter to William Wilson, April 1821 Verified source: Founders Online, Founders.archives.gov

Madison, who more than any other Father designed the constitutional architecture of this Republic, is explicit: the People themselves have a duty to suppress party spirit. Not to manage it, not to balance it — to suppress it. This is not the language of those who would build a permanent two-party system.

Franklin, the eldest and most universally trusted of our Founders, observed in 1731 — before the Republic even existed — that party is the engine of world affairs, and that those without party are forced to submit to the strongest. This is the structural observation that explains why the Two-Party Dominion has been so durable: the parties have the longest purses, the most wit, and they win.

"Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it." — George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796 Verified source: Yale Avalon Project, avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

Washington, in his Farewell Address, gave the most solemn warning in American history: the spirit of party is the common and continual mischief, sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. He did not say "manage." He did not say "balance." He said discourage and restrain. This is the mandate the Two-Party Dominion has been violating for two centuries.

Jefferson, at the end of his life, said to Henry Lee that he was of no party and never would be — and defined himself simply as an American. In the same letter he wrote: "I am of no party, and I am in the situation of a candid person who has never bound themselves by any pledge that would embarrass their free agency." This is the Independent's charter, written in the final testament of the man who wrote our Declaration of Independence.

We ask you, then: if the Fathers — all of them who spoke on this matter — opposed the party dominion, if they prescribed the cure, if they intended independent people to compete for the public trust — by what authority has the Two-Party Dominion claimed dominion over our ballot, our legislature, and our voice?

We proceed, therefore, to propose the cure which our Forefathers prescribed: the People's direct engagement with the business of governance, through a system new in mechanism but old in principle.

We propose no revolution in name — only in substance. The form of petition, of deliberation, of election — all of it remains rooted in the ancient practice of the Republican Form the Constitution guarantees. What changes is the mechanism by which the People's will is translated into the People's governance.

We call it the Tally Representation System, and it operates as follows:

We ask you to mark what this accomplishes:

• No Gerrymandering. There is no district to draw. The "district" is computed from the People's own positions. You cannot gerrymander mathematics.
• No Safe Seats. Winning depends entirely on how close your actual positions are to the actual People. There is no district that can be made safe for a party soldier who does not share the People's positions.
• No Donor Override. Ballot access requires signatures, not money. The person of modest means with strong convictions stands equal to the person of great wealth. The donor's influence over ballot access is eliminated entirely.
• The Line Item Veto for the Legislative Branch. Every representative is, in effect, continuously voting on every proposition as the People ranked it. If a representative's positions diverge from the State Centroid, the People know it — and the algorithm will replace them with someone closer to where they stand. This is continuous accountability, not the all-or-nothing of a two-year trust fall.
• True Deliberation. Because propositions are ranked by intensity, the political conversation changes from personality and party loyalty to actual ideas about actual things. The People are forced to form actual opinions on actual issues. Silence is allowed. Casual engagement is respected. The person who cares deeply about three things ranks three — and that is equal to the person who ranks ten.
• Parties as what they were meant to be. Civic associations, voluntary gatherings of like-minded citizens, deliberating and recruiting and organizing — but never controlling the ballot. The First Amendment protects the Moose Lodge. So shall it protect the Party. But the ballot belongs to the People.

"The causes of faction cannot be removed. Relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects. If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. But when a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government... enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens." — James Madison, The Federalist No. 10, November 23, 1787

Madison gave us the diagnosis and the prescription in the same essay. The causes of faction are permanent features of human nature — remove them and you remove liberty itself. But the effects can be controlled, if we build the right mechanisms. Our Tally System is exactly that mechanism: it controls faction not by suppressing it, but by making it mathematically impossible for a faction — even a majority faction — to capture the government through any route other than convincing the actual people.

We do not ask you to abandon your office or your principles. We ask you only to recognize that the mechanism by which you received your office is broken — has been broken for a very long time — and that the People of these States have the right, under the Republican Guarantee Clause, to demand a better mechanism.

This is our petition. We have set forth our grievances. We have shown what the Fathers taught. We have proposed the cure. We have acted, in all things, in the manner of petition established by our Forefathers — in 1774, when they petitioned a King; in 1775, when they petitioned for peace; in 1776, when they found that petition denied and turned instead to revolution.

Respectfully submitted in the ancient manner of petition.