Mission Statement

Thirty-five percent of all Americans currently identify themselves as independents.  Roughly 22% of the electorate are registered as such: independent, decline-to-state, unaffiliated, or enrolled in third parties.  The remainder live in states without partisan registration, but self-identify as independents in polls. (In addition, substantial numbers of Republicans and Democrats -- who register in a party in order to vote in primaries -- consider themselves to be independents.) What most independent voters mean by "independent" is that they aren't party loyalists.  Many believe partisanship has degraded our democracy and that the Democrats and Republicans have become "special interests" unto themselves. CUIP's mission is to organize independent voters to exercise their power as a force for radical democratic political reform.

No. Independents don't like parties.  We originally chose our name in 1994 when the third-party movement was crossing into the mainstream and there seemed to be opportunities for unifying diverse players.

But it turned out that after the 2000 presidential election, national independent parties faded from relevance; meanwhile, dissatisfaction with the two major parties and the size of the independent voter bloc continued to grow.  Since 2000, CUIP has focused its energies on building non-party organizations of independent voters to respond to the ongoing need for an independent voice and the failure of the third-party movement to provide it.  We remain committed to building a base for the independent political movement such that whatever national organizations of independents arise, grow from the bottom up rather than being manufactured, or imposed, from the top down--a mistake third parties have made time and again.

CUIP was founded in 1994 by two veteran independent activists: Jacqueline Salit, now CUIP's political director and the executive editor of The Neo-Independent magazine, and Dr. Lenora Fulani, America's leading African American independent.  Salit and Fulani are part of a nationwide network of independent activists who have engineered and helped to shape many of the central events, organizations and campaigns of independent political life during the last 25 years.  These include Fulani's own independent presidential run in 1988, the 1996 Ross Perot campaign, the National Patriot Party, the Reform Party, the New York Independence Party, Let Nader Debate, Nader for President 2004, and many more independent initiatives at the state and local level, including the Independence Party of South Carolina, Independent Texans, Independent Alabama, Committees for an Independent Voice in a dozen states and the Campaign for Independent Reform.

While the founders of CUIP come out of left and liberal progressive traditions, we believe that the United States has been profoundly hurt by ideological and political labeling.  The cutting edge political issues facing the country today have to do with top and bottom, not left and right. They have to do with insider and outsider, not liberal and conservative.  That's why CUIP strategy focuses on building a non-ideological, inclusionary movement for radical structural political reform. Politics is currently run from the top by the insiders, with the majority of the American people kept out.  We believe that arrangement has to change, and that independents are the force that can make that happen.

Weââ,¬â"¢re funded exclusively by individual contributions.  CUIP is a 501(c)(4) organization: a political non-profit.  Contributions to CUIP are not tax deductible.

CUIP does not endorse candidates.  It provides tactical and political support to local independent activists, organizations and political entities, and they may choose to support particular candidates.

The CUIP strategy is essentially a fusion strategy -- it is based on the recognition that independent voters can a candidate whether or not state law allows candidates to run under more than one party designation. (Most states don't.) It's designed to develop independents beyond the major-party category of "swing voters" to becoming a third force capable of exercising political power.

CUIP attorneys have litigated some of the independent movement's most cutting edge legal controversies in the arenas of ballot access, the presidential debates, the right of independent presidential candidates to create campaigns that aren't based on the model of the two major parties, and the use of public money for independent presidential contenders.  They have submitted novel advisory opinion requests to the Federal Election Commission -- for example, whether multiple parties, entities and presidential candidates may combine their vote totals to qualify for general election funding. Most recently, CUIP initiated a series of actions in federal court and at the Justice Department seeking the protections of the Voting Rights Act for black and other minority independents.

CUIP created Choosing An Independent President 2004 (ChIP 2004), a process through which independent voters could interface with presidential candidates across the spectrum (Democrat, Republican, Independent). The idea was to seek partnerships and provide endorsements to candidates who would champion issues of concern to independents -- largely structural political reform issues.

Our ChIP 2004 screening process, which included telephone and on-line polling of tens of thousands of voters in 30 states, mobilizing independents in open primary states and public and private dialogues with a range of candidates, culminated in a national conference in New Hampshire just days before the New Hampshire primary. The conference was attended by 300 delegates from 30 states. By then we had some brief contact with the Bush re-election campaign, but in 2004 the ChIP process mainly engaged with a number of Democrats: Howard Dean, John Edwards, Al Sharpton, Wesley Clark, and Dennis Kucinich. Ralph Nader entered our process just as the Dean candidacy was collapsing and John Kerry's was gaining dominance. Nader attended the New Hampshire conference and won the support of the majority of ChIP delegates. Organizing for ChIP 2008 is already underway.

Our national headquarters is in lower Manhattan in New York City.