Origins of the Initiative
The Mandate Democracy initiative emerged from Caltech Alumni at the 2018, 81st Annual Reunion & Seminar Day in Pasadena, CA. A special event Forum posed this unique challenge:
Discussion Forum: Engineering Democracy 4.0
Applied Political Technology: Review how networked Alums can advance regular web-based Voting on policy and budget priorities to surmount gridlock, dysfunction and factionalism. Transforming informed electoral mandates into actual governance outcomes.
Open to all, the Forum drew attendance and energetic dialogue from academics, interested individuals, Caltech Alumni and their partners from the classes of ’56 | ’58 | ’68 | ’73 | ’78 | ’82 | ’85 | ’08 | ’13 | and others. Alumni represented their residence houses of Avery, Blacker, Dabney, Fleming, Lloyd, Page and Ruddock, where undergraduates live in self-governed communities. An initial committee of 13 from 10 states exchanged working papers, then expanded to an initial network of 53 in 20 states. Mandate Democracy was created by and intended to network Alumni, independent from Caltech itself which has no authority or responsibility for Mandate Democracy’s activities.
