User:Ericwooten3/GOOOH

GOOOH (pronounced "go") is a non-partisan Political Action Committee (PAC) with the goal of replacing all 435 current members of the U.S. House of Representatives with peer-selected Representatives from each Congressional district using an alternative Congressional candidate selection and campaign finance process.

GOOOH members consider the current Primary election process and two-party system to be broken, ineffective and rife with corrupt "professional politicians" that serve only the interests of themselves, their parties and the special interest groups that fund them. GOOOH seeks to return to the Founding Fathers vision of a Constitutional Republic in which citizen legislators serve brief Congressional terms on behalf of their district constituents and solely represent the interests of their local citizenry (not parties or special interest groups) at a Federal level before returning to private life. The group cites polls that show only 8 percent of Americans believe the current representatives deserve to be re-elected, but 95 percent of incumbents are re-elected due to the broken two-party system.

GOOOH bills itself as a non-partisan candidate selection process, not a political partywith an agenda-based platform. Instead, it requires candidates to clearly state their own personal platforms via a Candidate Questionnaire and then to live up to their commitments. GOOOH requires that participants in the process agree to serve limited terms (currently proposed as 2 or 3) in order to remove pork and cronyism within the American political system. Another of GOOOH's primary goals is to take the influence of money and partisanship out of the election process by funding GOOOH candidate campaign via member crowdfunding and prohibiting outside campaign contributions.

GOOOH Goals:
 * To allow almost every American with modest means an opportunity to run for Congress via a participant-financed campaign fund.
 * To allow the electoral body in each congressional district to understand in advance how candidates will legislate on a variety of issues prior to voting them into office.
 * To select nominees for the U.S. House of Representatives that best represent the views of each congressional district.
 * To replace career politicians with citizen statesmen from each congressional district.
 * To hold Representatives accountable to the pre-election promises they make to the citizens that elected them.
 * To eliminate the control that predominant political parties have on the election process and their party members.
 * To eliminate the dependence/influence special interest financing on the election process.

FEC Status
GOOOH filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as a PAC on November 26, 2007 and intends to operate as a PAC until it has multiple Congressional candidates identified and has met all other National Committee standards. At that time it may consider applying for National Committee status.

Its main counterparts are the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National Committee, the Libertarian National Committee and the Green National Committee.

Campaign Role
At the national level, the GOOOH leadership is responsible for overseeing a self-funding selection process enabling everyday Americans with modest means to be chosen by the populace of their congressional district as federal Congressional candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as financing their congressional campaigns in the national elections. It is responsible for promoting its candidate selection system and coordinating party organizational activity.

GOOOH plays no role in Presidential Elections and focuses solely on Congressional Elections for the U.S. House of Representatives. It also supervises its own "convention" and raises funds, commissions polls, and coordinates campaign strategy. Following the selection of a party nominee, the public funding laws permit GOOOH to coordinate certain expenditures with the nominee, but additional funds are spent on general party-building.

Candidate Funding System
All qualifying citizens wishing to become GOOOH Candidates on their district's ballot will participate in funding a collective national campaign via the National Campaign Support Fee they submit as a requirement to participate in the GOOOH candidate selection sessions. The aggregate of fees collected from all participants will not be directed to an individual candidate's campaign, but rather to primarily promote the system as a whole with ancillary local campaigning on behalf of each district's selected candidate.

Candidate Application Process
Candidates are almost any persons interested in participating in the GOOOH Candidate Selection Sessions with the goal of becoming an elected representative. Candidates will be required to complete a six step process:
 * 1) Become a member (for free) on the GOOOH website.
 * 2) Pass a Candidate Screening Exam to ensure eligibility.
 * 3) Fill in an online Candidate Questionnaire to publicly record personal platform.
 * 4) Sign a Commitment Agreement stating they will legislate according to their questionnaire answers, or voluntarily resign within 72 hours.
 * 5) Pay a National Campaign Support Fee of $100.
 * 6) Submit their entry, thus registering to attend a candidate selection session in their district.

Candidate Screening Exam: Certain categories of people may be screened from the process based on Constitutional requirements, over-representation in government or other factors. Examples of groups excluded, but not limited to: non-U.S. citizens, those under the age of 25, felons, and those that have held federal political office.

Candidate Questionnaire: Candidates’ submitted answers will be made available to other candidates assigned to their selection pool, and possibly to the public at large. The responses of the selected candidate will become public record. Input to the questions will be accepted via an online Web site. Modifications to the final Questionnaire may be made based on this input. The final Questionnaire will be posted so that candidates may enter their responses online.

Commitment Agreement: A legally binding document that each Candidate will be required to sign in which each candidate promises they will resign from office if they vote against any answer given in their Questionnaire.

National Campaign Support Fee: The fee is required to 1) seed the national campaign "war chest" for all 435 GOOOH Candidates, 2) eliminate those who are not serious candidates, and 3) pay for expenses of the system.

Candidate Selection Process
The GOOOH Candidate Selection Sessions use a modification of the bracket system during which citizens of each Congressional District participate in the selection of a single candidate representing their district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Further, by participating in the process to select candidates, all participants become candidates themselves within the selection process and can be selected by their peers to advance to the following selection session.

Candidates who apply to participate in Candidate Selection Sessions will be randomly grouped with other candidates from their district into 10-man session groups. Session participants review and interview each other regarding their respective Candidate Questionnaire answers and then select the two candidates that best represent the political views of that 10-man group. Two candidates from each pool advance to the next selection session round, the process repeats itself, and eventually a single nominee is selected as the GOOOH congressional nominee within each of the 435 congressional districts. Each district nominee will then be placed on the ballot as that district’s representative candidate to compete in the general national Congressional election held every two years.

The GOOOH system currently excludes federal politicians and members of political families from participation in the system. They are excluded because GOOOH considers that they "...generally speaking, no longer seem to represent the interests of the common man..."

Post-Election Candidate Accountability
Commitment Agreement: Candidates will sign an agreement letter stating that they will voluntarily resign from office within 72 hours if they legislate contrary to their answers on the Candidate Questionnaire.

Override Clause: Given that each representative will be required to vote on a per-issue basis as he declared in his Questionnaire answers, he can either abstain from voting or he can invoke the "Override Clause" if he wishes to vote counter to the way he originally responded on the Candidate Questionnaire. If the Override Clause is invoked, a Representative must seek approval from the members of his district through online blogs/forums/surveys submitted to his district constituents via the GOOOH website in an attempt to convince them of the benefit of changing his position on the issue and vote in question.

A predetermined portion of the district’s population will then be required to submit a survey vote via the GOOOH website regarding the Representatives request and justification to vote contrary to their originally stated position on the Candidate Questionnaire. If the predetermined percent of the district's population do not participate in the survey, the Override Clause invocation is nullified and the Representative must vote as originally stated to their constituents or they violate their Commitment Agreement and must resign. A predetermined percent of the survey respondents will be required to approve the Representatives request in order to allow the Representative to successfully invoke the Override Clause and vote contrary to their original position on the issue. If the vote change request made by the GOOOH Representative is not approved by survey participants, the Representative must vote as originally stated to their constituents on their Candidate Questionnaire or they violate their Commitment Agreement and must resign.

Current Growth Status and Campaign Launch Projection
As of December 2010, GOOOH had 86,000 members nationally, and has directors in nearly every state, with the most active states being Texas, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina. Just after the health care reform vote, GOOOH.com attracted its one millionth website visitor. Upon recruiting 500,000 members, GOOOH states it will begin fund-raising and conduct its Candidate Selection Sessions to select GOOOH candidates for running in the national Congressional elections.

GOOOH Founding and Leadership
GOOOH was founded in 2007 by former Dell employee Tim Cox of Texas and author of the book Get Out of Our House: Revolution! ISBN 978-1-934454-03-9

Cox has been featured on numerous media programs — from ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC to Time Warner and MSNBC. Cox has also been a guest of Dennis Miller, Montel Williams, Lou Dobbs and more than 150 local radio hosts.