FAQs
What is LIV, are you a party, PAC or something else?
LIV is a nonpartisan, Texas nonprofit membership association for independent voters. Voters who vote for the person, not the party. LIV is recognized by the IRS as a tax-exempt “501c4 organization” operated exclusively to promote social welfare. Donations to LIV are not tax deductible.
What does LIV do?
LIV’s focus is voter education, policy development, and advocacy that promotes our mission at the state and federal level in the Texas legislature and the U.S. Congress, respectively. As a 501c4, we are also allowed to endorse candidates and measures, sparingly. Spending time on these activities are limited by law.
What is LIV’s mission?
The mission of LIV is to bring about competitive elections and a multiparty system.
As such, our mission allows us to get involved in a number of nonpartisan issues such as water protections, ending eminent domain for private gain, fair taxation, open government and electoral reform that promote more electoral options of candidates and measures.
We do not engage in the so-called “cultural wars” that add to more division between and within the political parties.
What specific activities has LIV done?
Our activities focus on engaging legislative bodies for policy reforms and more open government practices, for example:
The Texas Legislature
City Councils
County Commissioners Courts
Groundwater Districts
State agencies such as the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality (TCEQ),
the Public Utility Commission (PUC),
and the Railroad Commission
And others
Don’t 501c4’s engage in “dark money” campaigns, where campaign donors are hidden from the public?
Some do, yes. LIV does not.
If any appreciable spending is to be done for candidates we support, we encourage the use of a PAC, Independent Texans (IT) PAC, which preceded LIV, founded in 2001 following the demise of the Reform Party.
IT PAC has been registered and reporting to the Texas Ethics Commission where donors are fully disclosed and online since 2001.
How can I participate in LIV?
First, become a paying dues member of LIV. Annual dues range from $10 to $1,000 for the year.
Second, start attending our weekly LIV Development Meetings usually on Monday nights starting at 8 pm. Go to our Events page to sign up.
Third, get active in a local “LIV Hub." LIV Hubs determine their own activities and educational forums. These local hubs get two elected organizers in each county. Each county is part of one of 21 regional areas that elect one person to represent their region on the State LIV Board. Our State LIV Boardis the highest decision making body in LIV, guaranteeing a bottom up, rather than top down decision making structure. See our Start a LIV Hub section for more.
LIV Hubs utilize the map provided by the Texas Association of Regional Councils HERE
How can I learn more about competitive elections and multiparty systems?
We highly recommend to consider building LIV Hubs, read and discuss the book, “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop” by Professor Lee Drutman.
See Richard Winger’s review of the book on LIV News HERE.
Does LIV endorse candidates?
Yes. On occasion, LIV does endorsements or recomended “score cards,” for candidates regardless of their party.
However, we are not a political action committee (PAC) or a party. Also, our endorsements require 60% of LIV member’s support in the jurisdiction in which candidates are running.
Is LIV “anti-party?”
No, we support the rights of members of both LIV and parties to exist and to advocate for their beliefs, as an exercise of their federally protected rights to freedom of association and speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
That said, we do not support using public funds to pay for any party primaries or conventions.
Can we sue to get rid of unfair petition requirements for independents and minor parties or just get the Legislature to ease the requirements?
Litigation over the last 40 years has not been successful in Texas. Other states have eased requirements, like New Mexico that allows for online petitions.
Both parties in the Texas Legislature tend to block petition reforms.
We highly recommend you follow and subscribe to Richard Winger’s “Ballot Access News” to follow petition requirement battles all over the country.
Why is a membership association of independents so important?
We think new political parties are the cart before the horse. The horse, the organization of nearly 80 million independent American voters, is nonexistent unless we build LIV.
It’s our view, after years of involvement in several minor and new parties, including the well-funded Reform Party led by Ross Perot in 1990s, that new parties cannot succeed without an organization of, by and for the mass of independent voters who have minds of their own. Parties have a “winnowing effect” on these voters, where they begin to sort as “conservative” or “progressive,” or “moderates.”
A membership association for the 45% is where we can bring these voters together to harness their power in numbers to break through the two party system to make way for new parties.
How LIV defines an independent voter.
Have you ever heard the Cole Porter song, “Don’t Fence Me In?” Well, then, don’t!
Many independents have some common themes on broad issues as mentioned in our earlier section of “LIV’s Mission.”
What about public debt?
We seek fiscal responsibility and an end to debt accumulation at all levels of government: local, state and federal. When Ross Perot ran for President as an independent in 1992, he exposed the federal deficit as a ticking time bomb our debt was $4T at the time. He warned us about where we would be today. The country is now $39+T in debt and facing a “debt spiral.”
See this helpful explanation by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget on What Would a Fiscal Crisis Look Like.
We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the biggest threat to our national debt spiral: ongoing wars of aggression that threaten our economy and the world economy.
Organizing voters across party and partisan lines is our best defense in these times.
