If there's a group of people that understand technology less than Smith and care less about protecting freedom of speech on the internet than him, it would have to be the people living in Texas's 21st congressional district, which he represents.

Smith's been in the House since 1987, so he won't be going away any time soon without a fight. He won his last reelection with 69% of the votes, in 2010. Even though you've got 2 more years to prepare to take him down, I'd say you're extremely unlikely to succeed, particularly when you consider how short the public's collective attention span is.

Reddit already did an analysis of this[0], and determined which Congresspeople who supported bills like the Patriot Act, NDAA, and SOPA/PIPA are most vulnerable in the 2012 elections. I think they decided upon one or two targets to focus on, which is a smart move. If they can come up with a winning strategy and get a pro-internet/freedom of speech politician who sticks to his principles into office, then they have hope of gaining support from other groups of people in future elections.

0: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/nylx0/a_megalist_o...

-----

Personally, I believe that many of the current problems with the political system stem from (a) the electoral system and (b) the campaign finance system.

The electoral system allows otherwise unelectable politicians to get into Congress and hold onto their seats purely by virtue of gerrymandered Congressional districts. This[1] is Texas's 21st Congressional district. Ignore the vast swaths of land in the middle of nowhere, as those are not very densely populated. Focus on the parts of the district that approach the cities of San Antonio and Austin. See how oddly shaped they are? This is to ensure that only wealthy people in those cities are in the district. By combining the social conservatives (religious people) in the rural areas with the fiscal conservatives (wealthy people) in the suburban areas, they've created a district that is unwinnable for a non-Republican (Democrat or 3rd party).

Moreover, the lack of proportional representation in favor of a winner-takes-all situation makes it impossible for 3rd parties to get a foothold in the public consciousness, so that they can build over several elections into a formidable force. So even in districts that aren't so blatantly gerrymandered, you're left with what's essentially a political duopoly.

We've gone over the campaign finance issues with lobbying and all in other threads here, so you probaly already know the issues with that. The bottom line is that solving any of these issues requires first getting "our" people into office, using the current system.

The best hope of doing this is to identify local elections where we can first bring in an opposition candidate who supports us. This requires an election where (a) there's an incumbent who isn't really liked by his/her constituents, (b) a dearth of opposition candidates, and (c) someone living in the district who's supportive of our views and has the time, interest, and ability to run and win. This person would have to run as a Democrat or Republican (whichever the incumbent isn't) in order to get people to vote for him. If we can repeat this process in the same geographical area for several other positions, all of these candidates could then leave the parties they're a member of at the same time and form a new one. Now you would have a 3rd party with credibility and several respectable members already in political office. From there, it would be a matter of expanding to other states, and eventually to the national level.

1: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/de/Texas.21st.Co...