The Election Integrity "Superlist" E-mail Network Plan in Brief:
With your help, Election Defense Alliance proposes building a national election integrity E-mail network composed of many separate e-mail lists, each one a branch in the larger tree. Each branch will be managed by a participating individual or organization who agrees to transmit occasional election integrity messages to the addresses on the e-mail lists they manage. Note: We are not asking for lists of individual e-mail addresses. We are asking you to help us make contacts with e-mail list managers, so that election integrity messages can be transmitted to the mailing lists they manage.
RATIONALE
Information and Speech Are Still Free on the Internet (Use or Lose)
Let's make full use of internet e-mail, the only mass communications medium we have that is not subject to corporate censoring of news about fraudulent elections. The EI movement should put to full use the power of proliferating e-mail contacts to branch out beyond the core membership of our respective electoral integrity organizations. This is what it will take to build the level of mass awareness necessary to break through corporate media control and reclaim our elections and government from the corporations and "unduly electeds" who have usurped our democracy.
METHOD
Building the Election Integrity Superlist involves identifying managers of e-mail lists, persuading them to participate in a national election integrity e-mail network, and asking 10 questions about the characteristics of each list they manage.
Participation in the network is always voluntary. Each list manager will have discretionary control over which messages to send or not send.
Please note, we are not asking for lists of individual e-mail addressess (always a closely guarded resource!).
Rather, we are compiling a list of e-mail lists, and obtaining agreements from list managers to relay occasional messages of broad relevance to the election integrity cause.
All group and individual list managers participating in the network may propose messages to be sent over the network. Transmission of each message is always at the voluntary option of each participating group or list manager.
How to Participate
That's it in a nutshell. A project discussion and methodological details are presented in greater detail below.
A cover letter and questionnaire forms are provided in Excel and PDF formats.
(Using Excel will make data import easier and is preferred, if you have Excel. The Excel form will also work in the free Open Office application that you can download from http://openoffice.org ).
Please contact us if you can help Build this National EI E-mail Network. No contribution is too small. Every addition to this list of lists raises the multiplying power.
Method in Medium Detail
If you will gather and send to EDA the contact information described in the following method, EDA will compile those e-mail list contact addresses into a national election integrity network directory. Messages for national distribution will be sent to this master list of list managers, who will have agreed to relay EI announcements on to the address lists they manage.
How to Begin
Think of all the political, civic, and social circles you move in, and how many of those entities have e-mail communication lists. Probably most of them do.
Next, identify who the persons are who manage e-mail communications for each of those groups.
It helps if you already know the people who manage the e-mail lists and can call them on the phone; but if not, send them a personal note at their e-mail address, including a copy of the explanatory cover letter. This is essentially cold-call salesmanship by printed word.
In your phone call or letter to list managers, explain the e-mail network idea, and ask for their agreement to carry a few initial messages over their list from Election Defense Alliance. Then ask them 10 short questions about the characteristics of their lists, enter the answers on a form, and send completed forms to Info@electiondefensealliance.org.
If you have a phone number for the list manager, follow up your initial e-mail with a phone call. If you don't have their phone number, request it when you write to them, and if they respond, follow up with a call.
Cover Letter
I've prepared a cover letter to send to all the list managers you can identify in your region. The cover letter explains how the national EI e-mail list will work, what we are asking of them, and why the movement to establish transparent, publicly accountable electoral processes is fundamental to every desired social and political goal these other organizations wish to attain.
The cover letter, called SuperListCover_rev5.pdf, can be downloaded here.
Feel free to personalize the cover letter in any way that seems productive to you.
10 Questions
Two additional files will make it easier for you to collect the requested list information.
The Excel file is a live spreadsheet form. This live data form is preferred, but if you don't have Excel, or a comparable spreadsheet application, you can use the printable PDF form that you can fill in by hand and transmit as a fax. NOTE: The list collection forms are designed to print on legal paper (8.5 x 14") in landscape mode (horizontal).
Phase 1: Initial contacts
There are two phases to this e-mail network plan. The first phase is entirely dependent on the involvement of EDA participants and the voluntary cooperation of list managers across the country who, in response to our request and explanation of this plan, agree to transmit occasional election integrity messages to the lists of addresses they manage.
Phase 2: Opt-in subscriptions
In the second phase EDA will gradually develop its own list of subscribers who have voluntarily opted to join the EDA e-mail list, by responding to the subscription links that will be embedded in each message sent over the Superlist network.
Initially, the e-mail network will be a hybrid, consisting partly of early subscribers to EDA's own e-mail address list, but primarily composed of links to e-lists whose managers have agreed to transmist EDA messages over their own lists but who retain control of the actual addresses.
Gradually, EDA will accumulate its own subscriber base that we hope will include a majority of the persons originally contacted via messages relayed for us over other organization's mailing lists.
EDA will add individuals who voluntarily opt-in to the EDA subscription list for regular EDA organizational communications.
But, the Election Integrity Network "superlist of lists" will remain available for periodic transmission of major election integrity announcements of a nationwide significance, either as prepared by EDA, or by any other EI organizations that participate in building the list.
This could be a powerful tool of mutual benefit to all participating organizations, while building the mass civil constituency that will be necessary to bring about social change for transparent, publicly accountable elections.
We would hope that election integrity groups, as well as civil rights and social justice organizations of all kinds, would recognize the shared benefits of such a communications network, and voluntarily assist in its development and maintenance.
Please contact us if you can help Build this National EI E-mail Network.
Rationale and Method in Full Length
(Already convinced? Skip to Recap at the end)
Most every individual and organization participating in the election integrity movement has an e-mail list, or maybe even a large listserv, that they regularly use in their political work. Those lists could include anywhere from a dozen to several thousand names each. Beyond the EI movement, you know and probably participate in many other civic and social organizations in your region, and most of them also have e-mail lists. Draw up a list of all the lists you personally have, and as many other lists that you know or think exist for other organizations you are familiar with. Find out who the person is who manages each of those lists--either by asking people you know in the organizations, or by searching the "Contact us" information on their group's website. A webmaster is often the person who manages the group's e-mail list; or if not, will surely know who does. Whoever receives e-mail addresses of the form Info@xyz is very likely the e-mail list manager.
The Superlist information form* consists of 10 short questions to gather the key information about each e-mail list. Write (or better, phone) the list manager, introduce yourself, describe the Election Integrity Superlist idea, and ask if they would be willing to help build this network by agreeing to transmit an occasionalelection integrity message over their list(s). If their own group is an election integrity organizations, participating in the list will build public awareness of their own EI efforts. But no matter what an organization's programmatic goals are, honest elections are essential to their attainment. Mention to everyone you contact that the right to have one's vote counted as cast is the fundamental right that secures all others.
*(The Excel form (Superlist_form.xls) is live and editable, and preferred for those who have Excel; the Superlist_form.PDF is a static form that can be entered by hand and then faxed).
Important Distinction: E-List Contacts, not Individual Addresses
No e-mail addresses are requested other than the contact addresses for list managers. Participation is always voluntary. Each list manager will have discretionary control over which messages to send or not send. As each Alliance message is sent out, we will ask list managers to reply whether and when they sent or did not send each message proposed, and if they did not send, to please state their objections or other reasons for declining a message. This way we will gradually acquire a sense of the character of each branch in the network, and how to tailor messages for maximum transmission rates).
Network rules of the road will evolve as the list grows. Rather than attempt to answer here all policy questions that may arise, let us simply emphasize that list managers will always retain control of their lists and have the option to accept or reject transmission of any given message to their lists.
Each e-message sent over the combined e-network will be embedded with links pointing back to a subscription form at the EDA webpage, which recipients can use to subscribe directly to the EDA contact list if they wish to. This way, every message sent out over the network will have the potential to draw visitors to the EDA webpage, and to add subscribers to the EDA e-mail list that will grow into a primary component of the larger EI national e-mail network.
Geometric Growth Potential
E-mail messages are like seeds on the wind. You never know how far they will travel or how many times they will be reproduced. The geometric progression potential is enormous. For example, assume an intial message goes out to 500 addresses. Assume each recipient forwards to just 5 additional persons, and each successive recipient forwards to another 5. Assume that each successive wave takes one day to propagate. On the 5th day, the total is 312,500 messages. On the 9th day, the total is over 190 million. (Get out your calculators if that's hard to believe).
Of course, few if any messages propagate at the maximum theoretical rate. But once in circulation, any message has a potentially limitless lifespan. The more compelling the information we send out, the more likely it is to be reproduced. We will be contacting a population that, by virtue of being on the message lists we have selected, is already receptive and disposed to share the information. We are offering information that is largely absent from any other communications medium. I think we can expect fairly high transmission rates.
Network Also Builds a Subscriber Base for EDA Communications
Each outgoing message on the list will include an EDA e-mail subscription link. People who reply to the subscription link will be signaling their interest in receiving regular announcements and important news items about election activism from EDA directly. This EDA subscription list will start out small but eventually become a central component of the national EI e-mail network.
EI Network Can Continue to Grow as Shared Resource
The EDA subscription list will be used for EDA organizational communications, but the original EI network of cooperating e-list managers will not be abandoned. The network list can continue to be developed and maintained for occasional use by EDA as well as by other participating election integrity organizations, to transmit occasional announcements of nationwide significance.
As EI messages are passed along and travel beyond the pathways of the originating e-mail lists, every person who reads them can potentially forward those messages to other people in their personal address books. If these secondary message recipients belong to politically active organizations responsive to the electoral integrity cause, they can ask their own list managers to participate as new branches in the expanding EI e-mail network.
E-mails Are Our Electronic Broadsheets
Despite the corporate news establishment's continuing resistance to the notion that elections can be and have been electronically stolen, about 60% of the general population (and about 80% of registered Democrats) think it is likely, or very likely, that the 2004 election was rigged.
Sources:
These numbers have increased about 50% since the 2004 election. How is this possible? I think the explanation is that the alternative media of e-mail lists and websites have been reaching and educating an ever larger share of the population about the electoral integrity crisis.
Information and Speech Are Still Free on the Internet (Use or Lose)
Let's make full use of internet e-mail, the only mass communications medium we have that is not subject to corporate censoring of news about fraudulent elections. The EI movement should put to full use the power of proliferating e-mail contacts to branch out beyond the core membership of our respective electoral integrity organizations. This is what it will take to build the level of mass awareness necessary to break through corporate media control and reclaim our elections and government from the corporations and "unduly electeds" who have usurped our democracy.
RECAP: Ready, Set, Go
To start construction of the Election Integrity E-mail Network, download the cover letter and either the Excel (preferred) or the PDF version of the 10-question list information form. Answer the 10 questions about each e-mail list you personally have to contribute, or that you interview a list manager about. If you don't have Excel or a comparable spreadsheet application, print the PDF, fill it in by hand, and fax the completed form (write for faxing directions). The lists of e-lists you provide will constitute the first build of the national Election Integrity E-mail Network.
Here are the 10 questions to answer on the list collection form:
Please send your completed list collection forms to this address.
Questions? Comments? Write to us.
Please contact us if you can help Build this National EI E-mail Network. No contribution is too small. Every addition to this list of lists raises the multiplying power.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Superlist_form.XLS | 15.5 KB |
| SuperListCover_rev5.pdf | 78.19 KB |
| Superlist_form.pdf | 20.77 KB |