House party!

Outside in the chilly Berkeley dusk, the darkening yard lit by a string of white Christmas lights, 15 partygoers made a circle of plastic lawn chairs, and got down to their strategizing. As everyone went around the circle naming their top personal issue, the challenge for MoveOn became glaringly clear. If in the last months, if not years, the goal has been singular and unifying, enough to build a progressive army of literally millions around defeating George Bush, now what this same group wants to accomplish is considerably more murky.

Here's the short list of "top" issues the group of 15 named: election integrity; dismantling the electoral college; the war in Iraq; foreign policy; developing allies; the environment; education; separation of church and state; the economic crisis/coming stagflation; corporate takeover of the media; the rising theocracy ruling the country; building relationships with our very own "red" family members; and picking a few issues that "we can easily sell to voters in the Midwest."

But voter fraud is the one issue that most, if not all, of the group has heat for. "People are getting the feeling that it is all rigged," says one gray-beard. "Who knows? Maybe 100,000 votes got lost somewhere."

"I hope I don't sound like a nut, but we are living in the process of becoming a one-party state," added another. "The goal of the Republican Party is to turn this into a one-party state." By a quasi-consensus, election integrity/voter fraud emerged as the biggest issue, and the group then turned to devising strategies to address it. This was tougher, despite the list of suggestions the organizers handed out, including "transform the Dems," "move to the center," and "focus on winning back Congress." There was a lot of interest in "crafting a clear progressive message," but this provoked immediate calls for "media reform" since communicating a retooled message seems impossible without it. Returning to the living room to caucus with the other groups, another strategy -- "incarcerate the people who stole the election" -- drew chuckles.

It turned out all three breakout groups at the house party named election reform as one of their top issues, so that was the party's vote in the vast instant poll on priorities that MoveOn is now conducting. And it turns out that the rest of the house parties around the country mostly agreed, too.

In the preliminary results of the instant polling, some 200 house parties voted for election reform, with the war in Iraq coming in a close second at 170 votes. This pleased the organizers, since they're already circulating a petition calling on Congress to "investigate the integrity of the voting process in the 2004 election." I can't help wondering if "election reform" qualifies as one of those "few issues we can easily sell to voters in the Midwest" that one participant called for earlier. The house parties voted, with an overwhelming 428 votes, for "crafting a clear progressive message," as the best strategy for achieving MoveOn's goal. (Apparently, almost no one thinks a "move to the center" would be a good idea.)

Remarkably, in just a few hours, the MoveOn agenda was set with input from thousands of members: Craft a clear progressive message to bring about election reform. With a rousing quote from Thomas Jefferson, the gang on the speakerphone signed off, and Crocker picked up the guitar again to perform his ditty "Weapons of Mass Destruction," which he claims was a big hit among delegates to the Republican convention when he sang it on the streets of New York, while wearing an orange Guantánamo Bay-style jumpsuit.

As the party wound down, Siegel, the English teacher, said the night got her fired up. Davis, the salesman, says he still doesn't know if MoveOn will use all the strength it's developed in the run-up to the 2004 election to become "kingmakers" funneling money to candidates, like an EMILY's List, or rally around single issues. "I have no idea," he said.

What's clear is that reforming the election process -- whether that means ferreting out outright fraud and voter intimidation, reducing long lines at polling places or demanding a paper trail for all electronic voting machines -- now trumps all other issues for most MoveOn members at this house party and parties around the country.

A Berkeley woman, who gave her name as M. Wertheimer, argued that without "election integrity" all the work on the other issues just seems futile. "There was so much fraud in this election, if we don't do something, every election will be stolen," she said. "There is absolutely no reason that there shouldn't be a paper trail."

Brian Gardner, a 31-year-old MBA from Pittsburgh, Pa., who just moved to San Francisco, said: "I think that people really struggled to try to get Bush out of office. And I feel that they almost did -- if not did. These are people who believe in democracy. It's not just that it didn't produce the results that they wanted." He added: "I'm really iffy on whether or not the election was stolen. It's that it could have been. That's what gets to me."

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