Humans create cliques with people they favor — those you spend time with and return favors. In politics, the de-facto requirement for large campaign coffers naturally results in politicians forming cliques with donors.

From my personal experience, I get it. Without money you cannot win a national office. Therefore, those who win, are those who got the money and have formed the associated cliques. Unfortunately, it means politicians spend much of their policy time with problems that feel out of sync with a public that does not donate large amounts of money (most of us).

In the wake of McCutcheon v. FEC it is important to realize that competent people would and do run for public office, but dislike fundraising and the impact it has on developing good ideas for governance.

It doesn’t need to be like this in the social media age. It’s time to realize the fight for national office and ideas doesn’t matter much in the general election, it mostly matters in the Democratic and Republican primaries (third parties cannot work in First Past the Post Voting). In the primary, would be politicians don’t need money, but they need people to sign nominating petitions and turn out to vote.

There could be an app for that with the following features

Users home address shows you current politicians and challengers. The ideas incumbents and challengers offer Open commenting on ideas with the best comments rising to the top and a way to ban abusive commenters. (it may be necessary to link accounts to a real world identity). A method to communicate with candidates and follow their updates Alerts when candidates you support need signatures Alerts when new candidates are added in your area, Alerts when you need to register to vote Alerts in the lead up to primary elections and during voting times.

Photo credit Redditor /u/youngluck