Proof Through the Night    ( pttn.org  or  ProofThroughTheNight.Org)               


Summary:  Proof Through the Night is a nonpartisan voter education and voter empowerment program. It’s based on over 40 strategies, one of which is to initiate a chain reaction of voter empowerment. The vision is to create an informed, critically-thinking, and active American electorate in one decade. It’s been estimated by a presidential commission that roughly 30% of tax money is wasted. If only 15% could be saved that would be over half a trillion dollars a year. But a tax savings would only be one outcome: others major incentives would be: better infrastructure and services; increased national security and hope for the future; and an increased quality of life.  

Proof Through the Night is mainly web-based. It aims to be a comprehensive service because it aims to help voters have all five essentials needed for effective political action:

 

An Individual Needs to Do Five Things to Become Part of an Informed Electorate

(The bottom two are the prerequisite foundation for the top three)

 

 

Here are seven major strategies of the program:

 

1)  Put all the information that a citizen needed to know on one website. You can find this at http://www.pttn.org/politicalknowledge.htm.

2)  Name strong incentives for political involvement, ones that cause real engagement. For most people, doing only one’s patriotic duty is not enough of an incentive. For many people, a stronger incentive would be to make the most of the investment that you already made through the thousands of tax dollars you already invested. Also: to maintain the quality of life for you and your children, and to avoid future misery.

In the 1980s, President Reagan organized a group of businessmen called the Grace Commission. They examined the federal budget in detail and estimated that about 30% of the tax money was wasted. Translated to today, that’s more than $1 trillion. If even half of that could be saved or reallocated to worthy projects because of voter engagement and advocacy. That would mean a savings of $500 billion a year.

 

3)  Give people solid reasons to believe that a major structural change is possible. Here’s some surprising numbers: Citizens can actually have a decisive 15:1 advantage over lobbyists or a 7:1 advantage. When people learn this, it becomes easy to believe that half or a quarter of Americans will become involved when they learn that they together it’s not too hard to have a massive impact. Here are the numbers in detail:

The calculation: According to the Center for Public Integrity, there were 39,186 registered state lobbyists in 2005. There are also 35,866 lobbyists registered with the US Senate, and 23,822 registered with the House. In round numbers, that’s about 100,000 lobbyists (since many Senate and House lobbyists would be the same people). That number, times 2,000 hours per year is 200 million hours (200 M). Some of these lobbyists work in the public’s interest, but let’s assume that only one-fifth does. That would mean that 160 M hours a year are working against the public interest. Now imagine that 100 million Americans (less than half of the 220 million voting-age Americans) do just two hours a month of advocacy. (They would rely on the intelligence gathered by the public-minded lobbyists.) That would be (100 M x 2 hours x 12 months) or 2,400 M hours.

So the professional lobbyists would be outgunned, 2400M to 160M, or 15 to 1. Certainly the lobbyists have a money advantage, but at election time the ballot box is stuffed with votes, not dollars. Imagine a 15:1 advantage on a football field!  It’s HUGE!  So the power of this idea is in getting people to realize that a huge advantage is possible with not too much effort — because it’s easy to imagine that 50% of voters could get fired up on issues enough to give just two hours a month. The idea could be promulgated in a YouTube video.

Actually an hour of a citizen’s time is not equal to an hour of lobbyist’s time. A more potent comparison would be if the 100 million citizens would donate $50 per election cycle. This would yield $5 billion, and considering that the total US Senate and House races, along with the Presidential race were $3.9 billion (2004), it would outnumber the money spent nationally (especially if you take into account that much of that $3.9 billion was already from small donors.) In summary, the perception that the little guy must necessarily be outgunned by big money is completely wrong.

 

4)   Create an online course and online proficiency test for voter competency. Encourage people to take it. Hold it up as a new standard, as something every voter ought to work toward passing. Some people may need 15-20 hours of study to pass the test. Use the analogy that if people need to take a test before they can drive, maybe they should be able to take a test to prove they know enough of the basics to be intelligent voters. The course can be found at ProofThroughTheNight.org/PTTNcourse.htm www.proofthroughthenight.org/PTTNcourse.htm 

5)  Start a chain reaction that spreads person to person. Begin with people who already care about politics and understand the importance. Invite them to take and pass the proficiency test, and then to each invite two or three others to take the online course and pass the test—and then support them to pass it on. If each person invites and supports an average of two more people, the number of participants will keep doubling.
        Here’s our thinking on this: You’d be much more likely to do something if someone you know asks you personally, especially if they went through the program and believed in it. A person-to-person approach has three big advantages: 1)  It provides a stronger source of motivation, since you are being invited by someone you personally know, rather than a stranger;  2) It comes with a built-in source of support: the person who invites you can also support and encourage you. They are likely one of your best sources of support, since they know you; and 3) We don’t need millions of dollars to promote PTTN.
         One of the coolest things about the chain reaction is that it would be “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
         Will the support of a friend be enough to make it happen?  Yes, in some cases, no in others. It depends on the friend’s commitment to the program (and the support the friend gets to pass it on) depends on whether the person has fully grasped the payoffs of action, and penalties of inaction.  
         We think that this program will spread in waves. First it might begin with people who are already politically active, who spread it to their less active friends. Then, once it demonstrates a track record, more people will participate.

6) Inaugurate a new American tradition for the weekend before elections. Call them “Party and Study” events.  The idea is for people to plan a 2-3 hour study session the weekend before a general or primary election. People study the current candidates and issues with one or two friends, either over a meal, or in a low-key party atmosphere, whatever fits the style of you and your friends—pizza and sodas, a potluck, hors d’oeuvres, etc.

7) Although the heart of our growth will be the person-to-person chain reaction, we can work through organizations to accelerate our impact. We have two strategies that involve organizations. One happens when the chain reaction reaches a person who is an organizational leader; he or she can invite other leaders in his or her organization to participate. The leaders then lead by example, gaining proficiency themselves. Then the leadership creates a “climate of expectation” among the members of the organization—they encourage and expect them to participate in PTTN.

A second organizational strategy is to create organizational contests. Organizations challenge each other to a contest, a race to political proficiency. One group of college students could challenge another to a contest. One church could challenge another. One university could challenge another. One chapter of an environmental group could challenge another, and so on.
     Besides stimulating their members, organizational contests would also be an excellent way to get publicity and build prestige for Proof Through the Night.

 

Conclusion

It’s an ambitious program, but we need to confront each other and say, “No half measures—if it takes 15 hours of study to pass the test, and 2-3 hours a month of advocacy each month, well that’s the price of freedom. The payoffs will come.”

The other important thing to impress upon people is that since everyone has friends and since many people can lean on their friends, we don’t need a $100 million a year publicity campaign. We just need to remind people that “Raindrops make rivers, and rivers move mountains.”  People just need to accept and believe that small impacts add up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Status: We have three people who have signed the participant agreement and who are doing the PTTN program. The agreement is at: pttn.org/pttnagreement.pdf.  Interested people should request the strategy document, since the 46 strategies are more convincing than the seven presented here. 

 

 

Plans and Needs: In the near future we plan to create an online proficiency test, and also a program that will send people reminders to do certain PTTN actions (monthly advocacy, pre-election study of candidates and issues, support of “descendents,” etc.)  Much more work needs to be done to create an attractive, user-friendly website.



Potential Impact: This project could have multiple impacts on the quality of life of Americans and also on people around the world. A better electorate would 1) save tax money; 2) elect leaders that would increase American quality of life; and 3) increase global security. Major spin-off impacts of PTTN are that it could be a model for other democracies and also that the critical thinking skills people learn and transferable to other areas of life, such as personal financial decisions and decision-making in general.