POLITICAL THINK TANK PUTS ITSELF UP FOR SALE ON EBAY

That sub-title can be found in the information area of the official ebay listing for the sale of the Bay Area Center for Voting Research.

The listing goes on…

What holiday gift do you get for the political junkie who has everything and just can’t wait for the first Presidential primary ballots to be cast next year? How about an internationally renowned think tank that among other things broke new ground by ranking America’s most liberal and conservative cities.

The non-partisan Bay Area Center of Voting Research (BACVR) is doing what no other think tank has ever done before: putting itself up for sale on eBay. The think tank’s web site is: www.votingresearch.org.

“The Bay Area Center for Voting Research has always been on the cutting-edge of the think tank community,” said Phil Reiff, BACVR co-founder. “We democratized the staid world of political research by creating the first Internet-based think tank. Using the eBay auction process to select the next leadership for BACVR is a perfect extension of our innovative approach.”

“The winning bidder of the auction will take over ownership of the BACVR think tank and will become an instant political pundit with a prestigious platform,” said Jason Alderman BACVR’s other co-founder.

Alderman and Reiff said they set the opening bid for BACVR intentionally low at $5,000 in order to attract a wide array of potential new owners and to send a clear message to bidders that running a think tank can be done by anyone, not just Ivy-League professors and Washington, D.C. insiders.

In addition to the seminal study on America’s most liberal and conservative cities – which found Detroit to be the most liberal and Provo, Utah the most conservative – BACVR was also the first think tank to identify the far-reaching political impact ‘527’ organizations were having on elections. The think tank’s research can be read at www.votingresearch.org.

BACVR’s respected work has been cited by many other academic researchers as well as being featured in hundreds of articles in news media outlets worldwide, including the New York Times, USA Today, the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Miami Herald, the Detroit News, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Indianapolis Star, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the Arizona Republic, among others.

Foreign diplomats from Israel and China have also sought out BACVR researchers to better understand the evolving American political process.

BACVR was founded in 2004 by Alderman and Reiff. Initially created to study voting trends in the San Francisco Bay Area, BACVR kept its Northern California-centric name and eventually grew in scope to cover electoral research nationwide. After leading the organization for the past three years, Alderman and Reiff decided they were ready to turn their think tank over to new leadership.

The winning bidder will receive all of BACVR’s intellectual assets, including the organization’s web site, past research, and well-known name. Being an Internet based organization, there is no physical property to take over or employees to pay. This gives the think tank’s new leadership flexibility to run BACVR on a part-time basis with minimal resources, or to add staff, or to become integrated into another organization looking to bolster their activities and credibility.

Staying true to their belief that the think thank community needs to be further democratized and include a broader array of leaders, Alderman and Reiff are not placing restrictions on who can bid or win control of BACVR.

The think tank’s web site is: www.votingresearch.org.

A think tank would certainly make quite the stocking stuffer!