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We're raising seed funding and building a founding community.
See below for our approach, as we partner with organizations in the national movement.
Still reading? Thank you. Watch the lightning talk, or read more details below…
§The Founders Warned Us
We revere the architects of American democracy. We've forgotten their sharpest warning.
Political parties would destroy the republic. We haven't heeded that, but the flaws in the system have become undeniable.
Founders designed a system built on debate, compromise, and citizen deliberation — and they expected future generations to keep innovating. Instead, we got exactly the disease they feared most.
The good news? The American people do value innovation. We've demonstrated creative brilliance, resolve, and perseverance, time and time again. It's time we turn that attention to how we self-govern.
Alexander Hamilton*Letter to Theodore Sedgwick, July 10, 1804. founders.archives.gov
"I am no believer in the amalgamation of parties, nor do I consider it as either desirable or useful for the public."
John Adams"A division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil."
Thomas Jefferson*Letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823. Library of Congress: founders.archives.gov
"Political parties are the 'most fatal disease' of popular governments."
— Later voices, same warning —
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Dwight D. Eisenhower*Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961. Eisenhower Presidential Library.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence — whether sought or unsought."
Deliberation — when people (citizens randomly selected, open to all, or elected officials with the space to do it) do real research, hear each other out, and reach considered decisions together. People come in with opinions — but first-person testimony and research sharpen the decisions they reach. Software, or unbiased facilitators, can help run the process; they don't make the decisions.
§Three Ways Citizens Assert Power
Unlike the billions spent in the “outrage industrial complex”The “Outrage Industrial Complex” — the for-profit and non-profit ecosystem that profits from partisan division. Media running on outrage. Lobbyists that benefit from gridlock. Politicians whose careers depend on having an enemy. $27.6 billion per cycle turning citizens into tribal teams and policy into theater — and only ~3¢ of every dollar goes to repairing the system itself.
Full market analysis → trying to get change made with the system, our approach isn't about getting politician or legislature approval. Citizens already have tools to self-govern — and our power, when we do, is enormous.
1
Make Direct, Coordinated Acts of Speech
A crowd, coordinating, can be very powerful — especially when it legitimately speaks for the whole district.
Make Direct, Coordinated Acts of Speech
A crowd, coordinating, can be very powerful — especially when it legitimately speaks for the whole district.
There's something dramatically different about the voice of a whole city or district — citizens gathered across the political divide. Unlike special-interest lobbies, a cross-partisan citizen group carries moral high ground — and we intentionally build groups with that legitimacy, then take visible stands together.
What we do:
- Coordinated social media campaigns
- Op-ed pieces and large ads in local papers
- Jointly signed letters to elected officials
And we invite officials to something different from the grandstanding of a public hearing: an adult conversation. Citizens set the agenda — we ask a real question, not a gotcha. "Will you sit down and speak with us?"
Won't appear? We broadcast the cowardice. Won't stay on topic? Same.
A variation — acts of "collective will": the same cross-partisan group decides how to spend a pooled budget. Citizens choosing how to allocate a small donor-raised fund — an on-ramp into real deliberative practice.
2
Citizen Initiatives for Deliberative Governance
Citizens can pass city, county, or state initiatives that build in — permanently — a legitimate voice for the district. Town hall “yell-fests” and decisions made by council people in the dark corners of city hall can be replaced by adult, deliberative conversations.
Citizen Initiatives for Deliberative Governance
Citizens can pass city, county, or state initiatives that build in — permanently — a legitimate voice for the district. Town hall “yell-fests” and decisions made by council people in the dark corners of city hall can be replaced by adult, deliberative conversations.
Citizen ballot initiatives are powerful — but too often captured by special interests. Our approach crowdsources initiatives from cross-partisan citizens, so the voice at the table is legitimately the district's.
Roughly 25 states have paths for citizens to introduce deliberative bodies into governance — with no input needed from elected representatives. Countless cities, counties, and school boards have charters that can be amended the same way.
An example initiative we'd support:
- The city or state must convene a citizen assembly once per year — meeting 4–6 Saturday mornings.
- The assembly picks a topic, deliberates, and produces a policy recommendation. Lawyers are funded to draft the actual bill.
- The relevant council or legislature must vote on it, up or down. If they don't, the measure goes automatically onto the next ballot for citizens to decide.
Local citizens draft the details. We remind people that THEY have the power — and once they're enrolled in that vision, we help them take it.
3
Control Electoral Outcomes — The Lever
A cross-partisan voting bloc that can swing close races. State or federal.
Control Electoral Outcomes — The Lever
A cross-partisan voting bloc that can swing close races. State or federal.
How a few hundred citizens can change everything. In competitive districts decided by razor-thin margins, a small coalition — Republican, Democrat, and Independent — who commit to voting together holds the balance of power.
<1.5%
of voters — NRA peak
The NRA had fewer than 1.5% of voters at its peak — and blocked gun control for decades, even when 70% of Americans supported it. Their secret: members spanned both parties and voted as a disciplined bloc. We're applying the same arithmetic to a very different end.
Federal — Arizona 1st District
3,200vote margin
~1,100citizens needed
Held by just 3,200 votes. A cross-partisan coalition of ~1,100 organized citizens would have held the balance of power.
State — Pennsylvania HD-72
1,001vote margin
~350citizens needed
Decided by 1,001 votes. A disciplined bloc of ~350 cross-partisan citizens would have been decisive.
And while "election reform" has never reached the table as a top priority, we believe this is a very different story — far more revolutionary than advocating within the system for tweaks. This is about the people taking back their power.
§Deliberative Methods Produce Better Results
People who have worked with deliberative bodies of random citizens report that they simply far outperform our “expert politicians.” See these four examples from among hundreds.
Ireland's Citizens' Assembly on Abortion
2016–2018 · One of the most divisive issues in Irish society
99 randomly selected citizens — a cross-section of Irish society across age, gender, geography, and belief — spent five weekends hearing from medical experts, legal scholars, and women with lived experience.
Many arrived undecided or conservative. Through structured deliberation, they reached a recommendation far bolder than any politician had dared propose.
The national referendum that followed passed in a landslide — and the process was remarkably peaceful. The assembly had already done the hard work of reconciliation.
- 99 randomly selected citizens
- Diverse on politics, age, gender, race, income
- Met over 5 weekends
- Reached 87% unity on their decision
- The national vote followed … 66% voted Yes
And this isn't just an Irish story. There are hundreds of examples of citizen-assembly-style bodies in the United States — city, county, and state. The essential ingredient, in every one that works: the group represents the real diversity of the district, politically and otherwise. And they take real time to listen to each other.
§What We're Building
We support three interlocking efforts — each designed to make the others more powerful.
1
Spark the Conversation
Most Americans have never seriously considered that democratic alternatives are possible. We change that — through storytelling, media, and public dialogue that makes the idea impossible to ignore.
2
Foster Real Demonstrations
Fund and support citizen assemblies and deliberative experiments — in swing districts, online, locally. Every experiment produces evidence and momentum. The Belgium model didn't start as national policy; it started as a proof.
3
Organize for Power
Citizens voting as a cross-partisan bloc, rewriting local charters, and putting deliberative democracy on state ballots. This is how it becomes permanent. No politicians' permission required.
§Nuts and Bolts
Three ways we start a campaign — issue-led, community-led, or identity-led. For each, we partner with organizations that handle facilitation (online, live Zoom, or in-person), test for grassroots uptake (aim for k > 1 — each participant brings more than one along), and always run red, blue, and other/independent fronts in parallel. When a campaign is working, we take it to the supporter list.
A
Issue-led campaigns
A bridging issue we both want fixed — and politicians won't touch.
Issue-led campaigns
A bridging issue we both want fixed — and politicians won't touch.
Issues where reds and blues actually agree — sometimes overwhelmingly — but the system isn't built to deliver. A cross-partisan citizen coalition is.
- Sensible AI policy
- Veterans' health
- National debt
- Protecting Social Security
- Prescription drug costs
Why we lead with these: they're the expected entry. People can name the problem in one sentence. Easiest grassroots traction; clearest "win" condition.
B
Community-led bridges
Two communities that wouldn't otherwise talk, sharing one thing they both love.
Community-led bridges
Two communities that wouldn't otherwise talk, sharing one thing they both love.
Start with the shared interest. Build trust. Then we have a community ready to deliberate on something harder.
- Church choirs (often red-leaning) paired with song circles (often blue-leaning)
- Local businesses across the political map
- Sports leagues, garden clubs, hobbyist groups — any bridging-interest community
Why this works: the politics is downstream of the relationship. People who've already sung together (or built a business together) deliberate differently than strangers across a town hall.
C
Identity hooks
A life-stage identity that crosses the divide.
Identity hooks
A life-stage identity that crosses the divide.
Identity hooks cut through tribal politics. A new mom is a new mom on either side. Organize around the shared identity first, then politics.
- New parents
- Grandparents
- People who have recovered from cancer
- Veterans
- Small-business owners
Hypothesis: these may attract more attention than issue-led campaigns — the identity is sticky, sharable, and emotionally resonant. We'll test against the issue-led path side by side.
§A Virtuous Cycle
Each success makes the next one easier. That's how movements scale.
Conversation spreads awareness and creates demand for experiments. Experiments prove common ground is real, attracting people to the lever. The lever's impact — elected officials actually listening — proves change is possible.
That proof restores hope. Hope fuels more conversation. The cycle accelerates.
Donors and volunteers arrive. The network grows. And the idea that citizens can govern themselves stops being idealistic — and starts being obvious.
§How This Is Different
Most political effort in this country works inside the existing system — lobbying, campaigning, advocating for better candidates, hoping the right people win. Billions are spent, fighting the other side.
We're doing something structurally different. We focus on organizing alternative local civic infrastructure, where people learn to make decisions and take action, with deliberative methods at the center.
None of this requires politicians to want to change. It requires citizens to stop asking permission.
Cross-Partisan Throughout.
Everything we do must be balanced across the political divide. The voting coalitions only have leverage if they span liberal and conservative — that's the entire mechanism. A coalition of only progressives has zero additional power; their votes are already locked in. The power comes from crossing the aisle.
So we don't just aspire to balance — we require it, structurally, at every level.
Funding
Every million capped at 50% from each side
Leadership
Our board and leadership will ensure red, blue, and independent voices have equal power (since each is roughly a third of eligible voters).
Coalitions
Voting blocs must include balanced R, D, and Independent participation to have leverage
Every Experiment
Significant liberal + conservative + independent participation in every initiative. All sides, always.
Founding Team
We will not launch publicly without a named conservative co-chair on the founding board.
§About the Founder
Brian Burt has spent 20+ years leading multi-million-dollar technology projects, starting companies, and leading teams to successful launches.
He founded and ran MaestroConference for 12+ years — working closely with the Obama White House and campaigns on 30,000 events (including 50+ with the President and Michelle personally), and serving customers including Airbnb, the World Bank, Stanford, and hundreds of other nationally respected organizations. He invented breakout groups for conferencing, holds three patents, and exited the business in 2022.
Before MaestroConference, he led Charles Schwab's first AI-driven personalization system (serving billions of messages to 20M users monthly), and later managed a $25M+ portfolio at the Federal Reserve Bank.
Brian's career has spanned administrations and sectors — Wall Street, central banking, civic tech, and presidential-level convening.
Working on a solution based on citizens rather than politicians gives me tremendous hope. But to make this happen, we need a lot of people to contribute either with their time or resources, and join the effort. Will you join us?
— Brian Burt, Founder