Unity08

Unity08 was an American political reform movement that sought to offer all voters an opportunity to directly engage in politics by ranking the most crucial issues facing the country, discussing them with the candidates and engaging in an online, secure vote to nominate a bipartisan alternative to the Democratic Party and Republican Party presidential tickets for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Founded in 2006, the group gained attention from various media outlets, with Newsweek's Jonathan Alter dubbing the group's efforts a kind of open source politics.

In January 2008, Unity08 organizers announced that the group had suspended operations due to funding problems.Americans Elect 2012 is an organization that was formed by many of the individuals that were responsible for Unity 08, and had substantially identical goals for the 2012 presidential election cycle. Americans Elect also failed to nominate a candidate.

The political reform movement was founded as a non-profit organization by several political figures: Democrats Hamilton Jordan, Gerald Rafshoon, and Republican consultants Doug Bailey and Jim Jonas and the former two-term independent Maine Governor Angus King. Unity08 is attempting to leverage online technology, such as secure voting, to allow American voters to determine the most crucial issues facing the country, discuss them with potential nominees, and participate in an online convention to nominate a bipartisan presidential ticket. In an interview that aired on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer in May 2006, Unity08's founders said that the group was formed in response to the polarization between the Republican and Democratic political parties. The group also cited a poll it commissioned from Princeton Survey Research and claimed that 82 percent of Americans think that the two major political parties are unable to address the country's problems and that 73 percent of Americans are in favor of alternatives to the two parties.

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