Here are some of our favorite web sites.  Feel free to contact us with additional suggestions, but no overly partisan sites please.  The corruption of our democracy is a non-partisan problem in search of non-partisan solutions.

Essential Research

 Open Secrets (www.OpenSecrets.org)

For citizens concerned about institutionalized political corruption, Open Secrets is the most valuable resource on the web (except for ours, of course).   Open Secrets makes it depressingly simple to follow the money.   Visit them to find out which special interests are investing in - or being are being shaken down by - your US House Representative, Senator or President.  Learn which industries are giving the most to whom.  Connect earmarks to campaign contributions given to specific Members of Congress.   Visit, read and weep for the state of your democracy.

Clean Elections

Fix Congress First (www.FixCongressFirst.org)

Harvard Law Professor, progressive, and tireless clean elections advocate, Larry Lessig is the founder of Fix Congress First.  Lessig brings common sense as well as intellect to the election reform movement.  He knows we need a realistic strategy to bring about meaningful reform.  As a progressives, Lessig appreciates the necessity of creating a broad public coalition, including conservatives.  He is also knows that our Representatives in Congress are unlikely to reform themselves, so Lessig is also working to pave the way for an Article 5 Constitutional Convention.

Term Limits

 US Term Limits (www.termlimits.org)

US Term Limits helped lead the term limits movement in the 1990s and continues on after  losing in the Supreme Court (US Term Limits v. Thornton).    USTL fights on for term limits at various government levels.

The Alliance for Bonded Term Limits (http://www.bondedtermlimits.org/)

Since politicians are notorious for breaking their term limits promises, the founders of this organization hold them accountable by getting would-be  true citizen legislators to bond their term limits pledges with substantial personal assets.   

Gerrymandering

The California Citizens Redistricting Commission (http://wedrawthelines.ca.gov/)

Visit this site to see California's response to the problem of gerrymandering.

The Redistricting Game  (http://www.redistrictinggame.org/)

If only it were this fun when politicians gerrymander for real!   Play this gerrymandering game online and learn of the process of gerrymandering works (for politicians).

Gerrymandering, The Movie  ( http://www.gerrymanderingmovie.com/index.php )

See this one if you get a chance. 

 Here are some approaches to automated redistricting:

http://rangevoting.org/SplitLR.html

http://www.endgerrymandering.com/

http://www.americansforredistrictingreform.org/

http://www.redistrictingthenation.com/default.aspx

The Most Gerrymandered Congressional Districts

Other Reforms

FairVote  (http://www.fairvote.org/)

Fair Vote is a great resource for a number of interesting election reforms, including redistricting reform, national popular voting for President (abolish the electoral college), instant run-off voting, and proportional representation. 

Thirty-Thousand.org  (www.thirty-thousand.org/)

Here is a  radically democratic idea:  restore the original population to representative ratio for the US House.  The Founders never intended Members of the US House to represent over 60,000 people, but today a single district has nearly 700,000.  Using information technology and communications, could we significantly increase the size of the US House and keep our representatives at home near us?   It's an idea we should take seriously.