The mid-term elections have shown a large enthusiasm gap among Democratic voters. If Obama thinks its bad now, wait until he sees 2012 and seeks re-election. If the wars continue, the peace movement will find somewhere else to go and the Democrats will be in electoral trouble. The Dems need to energize their base by changing course on weapons and war.

Thanks to advances in Internet technologies, the obstacles the major parties and their special interest backers have erected to prevent voters from ousting their incumbents can be circumvented by voters who leverage the large scale collective action power of the Internet via the web application described in this series to get control of U.S. electoral processes. This application, the Interactive Voter Choice System (IVCS), enables dissatisfied voters to self-organize and build voting blocs and electoral coalitions that can run winning candidates in local Congressional elections without special interest funding. The voting blocs and coalitions will be able to run candidates who can defeat special interest-backed candidates, wealthy self-funded candidates, and candidates run by special interest-backed voting blocs, such as the Tea Party, because they will be able to set transpartisan agendas that appeal to a broader-cross section of voters. These voters will decide who they want to run and what their candidates’ agendas will be.

The majority of U.S. voters want to see most elected representatives in Congress defeated because they favor special interests over voters’ interests. But, voters face enormous obstacles in replacing the nation’s lawmakers with representatives untainted by special interest money and influence. These obstacles are the result of the electoral monopoly of the two major political parties, the gerrymandering of electoral districts, unfair federal and state election laws, and special interest-inspired campaign finance laws that favor private over public financing of elections. The recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC exacerbates the influence of these factors.

These obstacles make the large majority of seats in Congress “safe seats”. Incumbents and first time candidates running on the Democratic and Republican tickets with special interest financing have virtually insurmountable advantages over candidates running against them without major party support, or special interest financing. Top-down manipulation of elections is the result. Since voter dissatisfaction can’t be expressed through the dominant parties, grievances accumulate over time in feelings of frustration, anger and alienation.