The whole idea of the Voter Farmers Market is to stop participating in a toxic system where people lie, spend too much money on pointless promotions, and degrade themselves for the sake of winning an office that is rendered worthless by the corrupt way in which it is pursued.
We want to feel good about voting, about who we are, and what we stand for. Fortunately, a real option is available that will allow us to achieve these goals and still obtain an election outcome that is no worse than the sad outcome we have jadedly come to expect.
It is possible to get your name on the ballot for very little, even next to zero expense, when you have an organized movement helping you. With two or three thousand dollars, it is even easier. Once you are on the ballot, that's when the fun begins.
That's when you can rise above all the social politics, the left versus right, the personal attacks, simply by adopting the Voter Farmer's Market single issue campaign pledge: All you aim to do, if elected, is find ways to improve the integrity of our political process because when the corruption in our system is gone, we will be able to deal with all of our other problems much more fairly, logically, and systematically. And to demonstrate that you really mean business about focusing on this one issue if you are elected, you are going to run a campaign that does not raise campaign donations above the cost of getting on the ballot and does not purchase advertising or promotional opportunities beyond a website and the expenses involved in authoring what you have to say and traveling to people willing to listen to you.
When you take the Voter Farmers Market pledge, you embark in a heroic quest to represent democracy as it is meant to be and to focus the public's attention on the fact that political process integrity is step one in addressing any of the other problems our nation faces. In so doing, you are joining the ranks of our founding patriots in embracing citizen leadership based on integrity, rational discourse, and an insistence on democratic process! Win or lose, this is an adventure you will remember and be proud of for your entire life.
And one more thing: You won't be alone! You will be on your quest with an entire movement of American citizens who understand the goal is not personal advancement, not winning office, not my ideology or your ideology, but simply changing the system by changing the way we participate in it.
You'll be amazed how energizing and fun it is to take a stand that is based on such a simple, sound and sincerely held principle. You'll be delighted by the interactions you have and the bonds you make with people who have shed their cynicism and their entrenched ideologies in favor of faith in what political process integrity can achieve. When you are willing to participate honestly and with integrity in the political process and don't care what the outcome is so long as you have represented your belief that the first step in advancing the interests of the American people is to fix our political process, then being a candidate is not risky, not stressful, not exhausting, but just an opportunity to make yourself and your nation strong, healthy and appropriately proud.
