51–60 of 167 posts
My name is Jim Cupples and I work on RunForOffice.org Thank you for the suggestions and comments. I'm a politics nerd that likes local government, and believe it has dormant power for movements. I wrote a piece called The Bottom Carries the Top that explains my thoughts on that stuff. Anyway, I agree with many of the comments and we think the university positions is a great idea. If you like, feel free to email me at…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
True. And, if you see a news report about somebody whose positions you like deciding to run ... send them a campaign contribution. Running for office is quite costly these days, and no-strings-attached contributions are really helpful. (Many contributions have strings attached. Yours doesn't have to.)
Running for local office is not in fact all that expensive at all!
I wonder if there's a way to algorithmically determine how a candidate with subpar funding could beat somebody established with many more (a playbook of kinds). That would be the next step forward -- sure, you can run, but it flips the dynamic when you're smart about running to win.
This doesn't appear to include student offices, which, especially at large state universities, are very powerful and misunderstood. If you are a student, consider running for student office. It's likely (in fact almost certain) that your student government makes more decisions that impact your life and spends more of your money than the national government does. They typically have multi-million dollar budgets, seats…
"Almost certain" seems like an exaggeration. At my college (Yale), the "student government" was basically just a committee to plan Spring Fling. You can see their budget online: https://www.ycc.yale.edu/budget/
As a counterpoint, Columbia's student government is quite powerful.
There are multiple levels (with different domains of influence), but the most powerful is the student senate - each school is allotted two (I think) student senators, and they have the same level of authority as the senators representing the faculty, etc.
Columbia also has a long history of political activism and public protest, and the University Senate was actually established in the wake of the most famous of these[0], to provide students with a structured outlet for supporting or opposing university policies that did not involve literally occupying buildings on campus.
As far as elected representation within a private institution goes, it's not perfect, but it's pretty well-executed.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University_protests_o...
My name is Jim Cupples and I work on RunForOffice.org Thank you for the suggestions and comments. I'm a politics nerd that likes local government, and believe it has dormant power for movements. I wrote a piece called The Bottom Carries the Top that explains my thoughts on that stuff. Anyway, I agree with many of the comments and we think the university positions is a great idea. If you like, feel free to email me at…
My name is Jim Cupples and I work on RunForOffice.org Thank you for the suggestions and comments. I'm a politics nerd that likes local government, and believe it has dormant power for movements. I wrote a piece called The Bottom Carries the Top that explains my thoughts on that stuff. Anyway, I agree with many of the comments and we think the university positions is a great idea. If you like, feel free to email me at…
Before I share it widely, though, I'll probably wait for it to fix the issue of showing past elections as future, as that is very confusing for people who don't know term lengths off the top of their head.
My name is Jim Cupples and I work on RunForOffice.org Thank you for the suggestions and comments. I'm a politics nerd that likes local government, and believe it has dormant power for movements. I wrote a piece called The Bottom Carries the Top that explains my thoughts on that stuff. Anyway, I agree with many of the comments and we think the university positions is a great idea. If you like, feel free to email me at…
Edit: Filled out the data entry volunteer form
This would be much more useful if they displayed some election statistics and information on incumbents and political parties. The stated purpose of the tool is: > Today, 40% of state legislature races go uncontested and the problem is worse at the local level. There is a crisis of leadership occurring in our democracy. We need more people to lead. We need more people to run for office. > Run for Office is a free ser…
My name is Jim Cupples and I work on RunForOffice.org Thank you for the suggestions and comments. I'm a politics nerd that likes local government, and believe it has dormant power for movements. I wrote a piece called The Bottom Carries the Top that explains my thoughts on that stuff. Anyway, I agree with many of the comments and we think the university positions is a great idea. If you like, feel free to email me at…
And I'm sure people in places like Canada, Australia, France, etc would be interested in a similar site for their country as well.
Still, seems pretty neat so far.