I didn’t set out to write a campaign manifesto. I set out to see how hard it would be to be a write‑in candidate.
From my little corner of Nevada, that sounded like the most honest way to show my neighbors what I actually believe: no yard signs, no donor calls, no consultant class, just, “If you want someone like me, you know where to find my name.”
Then I learned there are deadlines for write‑in candidates.
In a system that tells you, “You can vote in whoever you want,” you actually have to be pre‑approved to be someone voters are allowed to write in. There are filing windows and declarations and paperwork months before anyone walks into a polling place.
On paper, that’s just administrative housekeeping. In reality, it’s a metaphor for how much of our “choice” in this country is managed before we ever see a ballot.
Why I’m writing a platform anyway
I’m not a politician. I don’t have a war chest or a team of staffers, and I’m not auditioning for cable news. What I do have is a voice, and like every citizen, it matters.
Over the last year and a half both on my personal Facebook page and here on Politically POMP, I’ve been pulling on a few threads: how gerrymandering rigs representation upstream, how defense bills quietly fuse our military to others without our consent, how Pride gets turned into corporate rainbow merch while queer and trans people are still policed and criminalized, how national debt and economic precarity become tools to keep ordinary people anxious and small.
If I were running for office, my platform wouldn’t start with slogans. It would start with one simple, unfashionable idea: Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights.
The platform I buy: FDR’s Second Bill of Rights
In January 1944, with World War II still raging, FDR went to Congress and said something politicians almost never say out loud: our original Bill of Rights protects political freedoms, but those freedoms are paper‑thin if people are economically insecure.
He laid out a “Second Bill of Rights”, not as charity, but as the conditions under which political freedom can actually exist. The list is remarkably straightforward:
The right to a useful, reasonably paid job.
The right to earn enough for adequate food, clothing, and recreation.
The right of farmers to a decent living from their work.
The right of businesses, large and small, to operate free from monopoly domination and unfair competition.
The right of every family to a decent home.
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to enjoy good health.
The right to protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.
The right to a good education.
That’s the economic platform I buy. If I were on a ballot, I wouldn’t pretend to have invented anything more clever. I’d be the candidate who says, “Let’s start where FDR left off and be honest about how far short we’re falling.”
Right by right, what’s broken now
You can take each of those rights and hold it up against the 2026 United States, and the gap between promise and reality is the story of our politics.
A useful, reasonably paid job.
Precarious gig work, union‑busting, and stagnant wages mean millions of people are technically “employed” but one missed paycheck away from disaster. Economic fear isn’t a bug; it’s a feature that keeps people from organizing, striking, or running for office themselves.
Enough for food, clothing, and recreation.
We normalize second jobs, side hustles, and constant anxiety as “hustle culture,” while rents, groceries, and medical bills outpace paychecks. Recreation becomes a luxury, not part of a human life.
Farmers and small businesses free from monopoly.
Consolidated agribusiness and mega‑retailers squeeze farmers, while monopoly tech and corporate giants make it nearly impossible for small businesses to compete on fair terms.
Decent homes.
Housing is treated like a speculative asset class more than a basic human need. Evictions, institutional landlords, and the disappearance of truly affordable options are policy choices, not acts of God.
Adequate medical care and protection from economic fears.
We still tie healthcare to employment and treat medical debt as a normal part of life. Our safety nets around disability, unemployment, and old age are porous by design.
Good education.
School quality tracks ZIP code and wealth, while student debt hangs around people’s necks for decades. We talk about “opportunity” but legislate scarcity.
If I were running, my platform wouldn’t be, “I alone can fix it.” It would be, “None of this is inevitable, and the people benefiting from the gap between FDR’s rights and our reality have names, addresses, and lobbyists.”
The 2026 add‑ons: the rights FDR couldn’t see
FDR couldn’t have seen our current internet, our climate crisis, or the way digital tools would reshape politics. So if I were being honest about running in 2026, I would have to name three more rights.
The right to digital privacy and autonomy
You should have the right not to be constantly tracked, profiled, and manipulated by governments or corporations.
That means warrant‑required surveillance, real limits on data collection, and algorithms that aren’t black boxes quietly sorting us into categories that determine what we see, what we’re offered, and even whether we’re considered “high risk” by law enforcement or insurers.
It means confronting how “national security” is used to justify ever‑expanding data fusion between militaries and intelligence agencies, and how easy it is to slide from “security” into a permanent, invisible dragnet.
The right to climate security
You should have the right to a livable environment, not just personally, but generationally.
Climate security means we stop treating the planet like a casino where a few companies cash out while everyone else lives with fires, floods, and toxic air. It’s not just emissions targets; it’s infrastructure that protects vulnerable communities instead of sacrificing them, and a just transition so fossil‑fuel workers aren’t thrown away when their industries change.
The right to a digital democracy
You should have the right to participate in public decisions through accessible, transparent digital tools, not just show up every few years to fill in bubbles on a piece of paper.
In practice, that means public, open‑source systems for things like commenting on legislation, tracking votes, drawing maps, and participating in budgeting and local planning. It means de‑weaponizing boring words like “redistricting” and “voice votes,” because as we’ve seen with gerrymandering and defense bills, the most consequential decisions get made where nobody is watching.
If I ran for office, my “modern rights” plank would be: no one should have to trade their privacy for participation, their climate for someone else’s profit, or their voice for someone else’s convenience.
How this ties back to what we’ve been talking about
These rights aren’t abstract. They’re the through‑line of everything we’ve been talking about together.
When I wrote about gerrymandering in Louisiana, I was really writing about whether democracy is a ritual or a relationship. A digital democracy would make those “public hearings” something more than technical theater.
When I dug into that NDAA provision about integrating our military with another country’s, I was talking about consent of the governed in an age of AI, cyber defense, and data fusion. Digital privacy rights are the firewall between “security” and totalizing surveillance.
When I started Pride month with a riot instead of a rainbow, it was a reminder that rights are won through organized dissent, not corporate branding. Climate security and digital democracy are about keeping space for that dissent, online and offline, against both state and corporate control.
When I’ve talked about debt and economic anxiety, it’s because those things are tools to keep people from feeling like they have the bandwidth to care about any of this. FDR’s Second Bill of Rights is one way of saying, “You shouldn’t have to be economically comfortable to be politically free.”
My “platform” is just those threads pulled together into one fabric.
Why the write‑in rules matter
So why start with the write‑in story? Because it’s a tiny example of the biggest problem: how the system quietly decides who is “allowed” to be a choice before any of us get to weigh in.
Deadlines and filing windows matter; they keep elections from being chaos. But when the rules are set up so that even your protest vote has to be pre‑registered months in advance, we should at least admit how curated our democracy really is.
If I were running as a write‑in, I wouldn’t just be asking you to write my name. I’d be asking you to look at the walls around the ballot and ask who built them, who benefits from them, and what it would mean to tear some of them down.
If this were an actual campaign…
If this were an actual campaign, here’s what I’d promise:
I’d measure every policy against FDR’s economic rights and our modern ones: does it move us toward jobs with dignity, healthcare, housing, education, privacy, climate security, and meaningful participation, or away from them?
I’d refuse to hide behind process jargon like “chairman’s mark” or “voice vote.” If something is important enough to fuse our military with another country’s, or redraw your district, it’s important enough for a recorded vote you can see.
I’d treat digital tools as public infrastructure, not private toys. That means pushing for open systems where you can watch, comment, and shape what’s happening, not just doomscroll after the fact.
I’m not on your ballot, and realistically, I probably won’t ever be. But the point of writing this out is not to audition; it’s to give you a lens.
If any candidate, local, state, or national, wants your vote, you have every right to ask them how close their platform comes to these rights, and who pays the price when they fall short.
