What kind of party?

What could a new or moderate California political party be like? It could, like other political parties, be built around political or economic ideology like fiscal conservatism or Keynesian economic theory. It could be based on usually trying to find compromises between what Republicans and Democrats want. It could be corrupted by special interest money or it could be relatively free from corruption. A political party could be a lot of things.

California Moderates

Existing political parties offer a vast range of political and economic ideology. Given that, why try to make up some more? The track record of hard core political ideology over pragmatism does not look so good at the moment. It makes sense to start from a relatively non-ideological but pragmatic point of view. A new party could look realistically at political problems and issues with as little distortion by ideology or special interest spin as possible.

From that vantage point, the a new party could find and advocate for the most cost-effective and efficient policy that has a chance of political success. In some cases a good solution to a social problem or issue might be considered conservative, liberal or a compromise between those two. Sometimes it might be none of those. That is one aspect of not being trapped by political ideology - it frees you to fairly consider actions that ideologues cannot conceive or accept, even if their point of view is 'wrong' or second best.

Nuts and bolts

Setting policy: One way for a new party to differ from Democrats and Republicans would be to allow its members or groups of members who want to formulate policies. For Democrats and Republicans, influencing policy is largely open only to life-long activists and major money donors. For a new open party, policies would be voted on by all members before it becomes official party policy. Opposing or differing policy proposals by members would be available online so that people would have a chance to consider the various policy arguments, including a chance to comment on proposals.

Party policies could be voted on under a schedule that members want, e.g., once a year, every two years, every four years or whenever made sense. Members could vote on all, some or no party policies as they wish.

Vote by internet: The Independent Party of Oregon has just finished a primary vote by internet. A new California party could do the same thing for internal policy votes and for primaries and general elections. That would free the party to hold primary elections at any time that its members want, like a day or two before primaries or caucuses in New Hampshire or Iowa. That might even dilute the undue political influence that those states have on national politics.

Membership: People would need to sign up and when asked, sign an affidavit of registration. Registering a new party in California requires affidavits from a number of people equal to or greater than 1% of  the people who voted in the last general election (about 90,000). A new party can register by petition, but that requires ten times the number of signatures (about 900,000). The needed number of signatures make the affidavit process difficult but possible. The petition route is probably impossible without several million dollars, which is not available. Given the needed numbers, it probably take at least a year or two, to get the needed number of people willing to qualify a new party.