I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in politics.  I can clearly remember being a child and turning on C-SPAN to try and decipher what these old men in the government were talking about.  Of course at 8, politics is figuring out how to get ungrounded or trying to negotiate a later bedtime, not fiscal policy. Needless to say, I never did quite figure out what was happening with those men on the television set. 

Fast forward my life ten years from then and you’ll find me walking the streets of Toledo, Ohio working for the Kerry/Edwards campaign and sitting in an office building dialing phones, registering support for Marcy Kaptur’s congressional campaign.  At this point, I was at the height of my partisanship.  As someone who was completely disgusted by George W. Bush and his policies I took every opportunity to talk to the people around me about politics. At the restaurant where I worked I wore campaign pins on my shirt during my shift and probably offended a lot of customers who came in.  I repeatedly talked to the cooks and anyone who would listen about why the Democrats were right and why the Republicans were wrong with no regard for the validity of the others opinion.  When the election came, I sat up all night watching the results from Ohio come in.  One by one, I watched the rural counties of my home state of Ohio turn red. “How could this happen?”  I must have asked this to myself a thousand times in the next few days when I sucked up my pride and had to look my Republican friends in the eye.  “At least this county was one of the bluest in the state”, I’d say to them, trying to mask what was left of my confidence.

Looking back, I suppose I don’t have any regrets about how miserable I probably was to be around.  Admittedly, I was entirely too obnoxious about my viewpoints and would preach to everyone and anyone I thought would listen even though most of them probably didn’t want to hear it.  Even after all these years to reflect and focus on hindsight my only regret is knowing that I didn’t change the mind of a single person during my conversations.  Unless someone was completely devoid of an opinion and were susceptible to an onslaught of one-sided facts, I know I didn’t affect them one way or the other.

Since then, I’ve read a bit by authors on both sides of the isle and have learned to embrace all arguments that are based on rational personal thoughts, facts and evidence rather than talking points from either party.  I’ve learned that shouting and carrying on can only make someone resent you, that people have to make up their own minds about issues, and that neither party is perfect.  I’ve learned that someone who votes for Bush because they think he is cuter and nothing more (true story) is just as wrong for voting for Obama because of the color of his skin and nothing more.  The issues matter.

What pains me the most in all of this is the tone the country’s political dialogue has taken and the thought that I was a willing participant in it.  I’ve realized that all of this shouting is pointless because often both sides generally have a valid point or two in any circumstance that should be addressed.  Regardless of this fact, there has been a self destructing race to the bottom of the barrel with the tactics used by parties to slander, humiliate, and debase the other side. All of this, coupled with the idea that somehow we’re either part of red America or blue America is very disturbing to me.  Where has the civility and common purpose gone?

Enter the Coffee Party.

The Coffee Party recently held its first convention in Louisville, Kentucky and I decided to make the long six hour drive to attend.  While I missed a lot of good stuff the first day, I was still excited to attend the second day, especially with the mock constitutional convention being held.

For clarification, the Coffee Party is not the antithesis of the Tea Party as many presume it to be; it is in fact an alternative. The Coffee Party exists to change the tone of our national dialogue from hostility to civility.  If you could, imagine for a moment a political party which isn’t based on a common liberal or conservative agenda but a party based on an agenda that is constructed when liberals and conservatives can come together and discuss their hopes, worries, fears and find common solutions to common problems based on reason, facts and common principles.

My story from this convention begins during the second session of the constitutional convention.  I had been roaming around prior to the session starting and walked in right as people were getting into groups to discuss the issues.  Having missed the instructions, I picked a table at random and sat down.  I ended up with the Electoral Procedures group where we would be discussing changes that would make voting more reliable, and increase confidence in the results.  Looking around the table we all introduced ourselves and where we were from.  In the end, we had a lady from Chicago, Illinois; two gentlemen from Austin, Texas; two more gentlemen from the Washington and Oregon, another gentleman from Maryland and another from Kentucky.  With myself included, we had a pretty good sampling of every geographic demographic in America and with the introductions concluded we began talking about our priorities that were on the table.

Initially, I remember that we seemingly agreed on very little.  Going down our list of proposed solutions (which I assume was drafted in the first session which I missed to attend another group) we each found ourselves stuck in what we thought was the most important idea on the list.  In these kind of situations, I’ve found even when you’re discussing a matter with a like-minded individual things can tend to get a bit loud.  But something happened.  Civility happened.

One by one we began passing around the issues.  Each of us took a moment to discuss what and why a certain aspect bothered us or why we supported it.  Slowly but surely, we came to a consensus on a variety of reforms we would like to see in the national voting procedure.

A part of the conversation I remember distinctly was when we came to whether or not to include a provision to establish a paper copy all ballots taken electronically.  The concern at the table came from one of the gentlemen from Texas who was adamant about voter privacy.  While a part of me, being from a generation who puts literally everything into public domain thought it was a bit silly, I asked him why he felt the way he did about voter privacy.  He explained his thought that with a tangible paper record that someone would have the ability to carry out with them, another individual could check to see how they voted.  He explained further that if someone would like to pay voters off, having a piece of paper that is easy to bring back would be a sure fire way to check up on someone to make sure they voted the way you told them to. After he finished explaining his position I had nothing more to do than nod in agreement.  It was so obvious, yet I had never thought of that possibility.  After some discussion, we devised what I now consider an essential idea for American democracy:

We came to the conclusion that states should be required to “provide a durable record, humanly countable for each vote cast”, and “ensure that the paper ballots count be audited.”  Our judgment being, that in the event of an electronic voting malfunction or tampering, the paper ballots would have an official record of votes cast. If these paper ballots were then counted later a discrepancy could easily be found in the electronic voting record and the paper ballots would take precedent.  This solves many problems at once:

a.      It creates a paper trail for electronic voting machines

b.      It ensures voter privacy by not requiring an individual to leave the ballot area with any medium that records their vote and

c.       Provides a better method for auditing elections.

What amazed me the most was that a group of people who disagreed on a lot of fundamental issues could come together on so many different topics to produce what I considered to be a great list of ideas for election reform.  This didn’t happen through politicking, through subversion or deceit.  There was no yelling, screaming, or name calling either – just a humble debate based on the basic facts and evidence that presented to our minds the way the founders intended.

We know from experience that screaming, yelling and name-calling is great if you want to divide a group of people, a nation, or if you selfishly assume that just getting enough support qualifies as a mandate to govern.   But considering that we’ve had years of this divisiveness already and the road ahead looks dark and bleak, I would hope and assume that we, as a nation, would opt for a different path. 

Time has proven again and again that a united American people can accomplish anything they set their mind to.  If you believe like I do that there is hope in civility, hope in conversation, and hope in truth and reason I encourage you to look into the Coffee Party.  Together we can move this country forward past these days of hyper-partisanship and division trancend into a day where there aren’t red states or blue states - just American states - and that day will be certainly be brighter for all of us.

You can’t stop….a movement, a movement, a movement.