By Michael Drucker
I recommend independents take a look at www.cuip.org. I have worked with this group since 2001.

The Committee for a Unified Independent Party, Inc. (CUIP) is a national strategy center and organizing hub that designs and executes cutting edge tactics to develop America's growing independent movement. Founded in 1994, CUIP mounts political, legal, legislative and organizing challenges to partisan control of the political process. It has pioneered methods of organizing independents without a political party, creating independent voter associations to project the voice of the 35% of the electorate that considers itself independent. For CUIP, independents are not “swing voters” who exist to be wooed and swayed by one or the other major party. Independents have strongly held beliefs about how partisanship and ideological labeling are corrupting and constraining progress. Independents defy traditional political labels; what they share is support for the principle that radical structural reform of the electoral process and of government is the urgent political necessity of the day.

CUIP attorneys have litigated some of the independent movement’s most cutting edge legal controversies in the arenas of ballot access, the presidential debates, the right of independent presidential candidates to create campaigns that aren’t based on the model of the two major parties, and the use of public money for independent presidential contenders. They have submitted novel advisory opinion requests to the Federal Election Commission – for example, whether multiple parties, entities and presidential candidates may combine their vote totals to qualify for general election funding. Most recently, CUIP initiated a series of actions in federal court and at the Justice Department seeking the protections of the Voting Rights Act for black and other minority independents.

CUIP created Choosing An Independent President 2004 (ChIP 2004), a process through which independent voters could interface with presidential candidates across the spectrum (Democrat, Republican, Independent). The idea was to seek partnerships and provide endorsements to candidates who would champion issues of concern to independents – largely structural political reform issues.

Our ChIP 2004 screening process, which included telephone and on-line polling of tens of thousands of voters in 30 states, mobilizing independents in “open primary” states and public and private dialogues with a range of candidates, culminated in a national conference in New Hampshire just days before the New Hampshire primary. The conference was attended by 300 delegates from 30 states. By then we had some brief contact with the Bush re-election campaign, but in 2004 the ChIP process mainly engaged with a number of Democrats – Howard Dean, John Edwards, Al Sharpton, Wesley Clark, and Dennis Kucinich. Ralph Nader entered our process just as the Dean candidacy was collapsing and John Kerry’s was gaining dominance. Nader attended the New Hampshire conference and won the support of the majority of ChIP delegates. Organizing for ChIP 2008 is already underway.

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