As of May, 2003, I have decided to no longer run for this office. I am maintaining the website for several reasons, not the least of which is that the effort expended in developing the ideas was clearly worthy, and the work produced should therefore be preserved. My further reasons for no longer seeking elective office can be found in this essay - Saving America from Ourselves.
from the 2004 Presidential Campaign of Joel A. Wendt: the how to help the campaign page
How to Help the Campaign
If the reader of these pages wants to take an interest in the campaign, here are suggestions regarding various needs, and you are free to pick and choose, or initiate something else on your own. Citizen Governance is rooted in the individual citizen's free choice of the nature of the own individual way to act as a responsible citizen. The only thing that I ask is that you always act on your own responsibility. Don't present yourself as representing me, or the campaign, but only yourself.
One of the most crucial needs, as the campaign develops, is the acquiring of information, in particular information about the write-in voting rules of each of the 50 States, both in primary elections and the general election. In conjunction with this we need to obtain voter registration information, also for each State.
Since this campaign is being done on the basis of needing as little funding as possible (it would be nice if we could do it without anything but voluntary labor in the sense of individual acts of citizen responsibility), there will be no effort made to get my name on any ballot, with all the petitions and other rules such a process entails. If people really want to vote for me, then they should know it before they enter the polling booth, and be sufficiently aware of their rights as to be able to write-in my name in the appropriate fashion.
This being the case, a primary need of the campaign is for individuals to do the research of their own State laws in this regard, and then to forward that via e-mail to the campaign, so that I can post this to the campaign website, with not only a general description of the situation in each State, but also provide Internet links to each States own websites as are relevant and useful.
A second way to help the campaign is to make personal contacts with others, and invite them to join the Citizen Governance movement. Remember, however, that it is entirely appropriate to be active in the Citizen Governance movement and in the renewal of the Ideal that is America, and not be involved in the campaign. One does not necessarily require the other. Obviously forming one or more renewal groups, whether of the formal or informal kind will be a great service to our Nation, whether it serves the campaign at the same time or not.
At the same time, the primary means of the campaign is word of mouth, and individual acts of personal contact are the most important.
A third way to help the campaign is to down load a copy of at least the first working paper, Citizen Governance and the Future of the Republic, and the twelfth, Re-imagining the Conduct of the Presidency. Then copy and distribute these two papers as you see fit. Sending this material to local newspapers, or posting it at librarys, all such kinds of activity will be fruitful.
A way to indirectly help the campaign is to invite me to the region where you live to give educational talks. These are to be the primary way I act as a citizen myself, and how I now seek to earn a living. Such talks would be based on the work published on my research website, Shapes in the Fire. I will not be giving political talks during these travels, by the way, as the campaign is being conducted through the Internet, and via word of mouth - that is, as a result of individual acts of Citizen Governance.
If you are going to invite me to give such educational talks, and then lead the following-on conversations, these are instances where I will have to be paid a fee and expenses. I should be contacted via e-mail, or at my snail mail address: Joel A. Wendt, P.O. Box 219, Greenville, NH, 03048. [I have investigated briefly the US campaign finance laws, and found them complicated in the extreme, and clearly intended only to serve and relate to professionally run political campaigns. At the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if what I am asking for on this part of my campaign website violates some of these laws - the PDF file was over 200 pages long, and I simply was not going to bother trying to understand it. In effect, although perhaps not on purpose, one consequence of these laws is to make impossible the running for office of someone who is poor. This is wrong, of course, and certainly not an aspect of the Ideal of our Constitution. Anyone should be able to run for office, and laws should exist that foster this, rather than impede it. If fact, our laws should provide to the poor, upon request, whatever assistance they might need in order to mount a political campaign, and the absence of such laws ought to be thought to violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The very fact that great wealth is currently required to engage in seeking office is an egregious failure of our system in practice.]
This being the case, I am also going to add to the above an appeal for support for my research work. Everything of a political nature on my campaign website is based upon years of research into the political and the social that I have made freely available on my research website. Should anyone want to support this research (and I very much need to have such support), funds can be sent to the above address for this purpose.
The fact is that I presently live on $685.00 dollars a month from social security, and in fact would not have a place to live (would be homeless), where it not for the fact that my 20 year old son lives with me and works full time. I have no health insurance, no car insurance, and would prefer to continue this work of research and political activism over any other activity, but if monies do not soon appear I will be forced to return to some job that will, in effect, consume those physical and mental resources that are currently devoted to my social and poltical avocation. So if you like what you have found on these pages, either the campaign website or the research website, please consider making a small donation of support. Thank you in advance for whatever generosity you are able to muster. [I wouldn't be surprise if this was illegal for me to ask for, in which case if you are concerned for yourself, then don't make a contribution. If at some later date someone wants to put me in jail for trying to earn a living contributing in this way to our civilization, then it will be fine with me - I understand at the very least I would have good medical resources available, a place out of the rain and three meals a day. Also the company is probably very interesting.]
If your thing is posters, T-shirts or bumper stickers, here is how I would like my message put out:
a) "write-in Joel A. Wendt for President, he's one of us"; or
b) "write-in Joel A. Wendt for President, People before profits"; or
c) whatever you want, but then its your message.
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