I lead policy, advocacy strategy, and related investments for the global Government Transparency initiative of Omidyar Network.
This blog does not represent the views of Omidyar Network and is my personal blog, but mostly on open government issues. I also post on Twitter @martintisne
Before joining ON, I was founding director of the Transparency and Accountability Initiative, a collaborative of leading funders committed to strengthening democracy by empowering citizens to hold their governing institutions to account. At Transparency and Accountability Initiative, I helped found the Open Government Partnership, a multilateral initiative aimed at securing commitments from governments to promote transparency, increase civic participation, and harness new technologies for more effective governance. Previously, I founded the aid transparency campaign Publish What You Fund, helped launch Integrity Watch Afghanistan, and was a founding staff member at Tiri.
I started working on open government in 2001 working for the Open Society Institute in Budapest, where I researched the impact of anti-corruption assistance in Southeast Europe.
open up 
Greetings Martin,
In light of statements such as –
“The Commission on Presidential Debates is a corrupt stranglehold on our democracy.” – Phil Donahue
“In dictatorships, it’s common for political insiders to hinder or even silence non-establishment challengers. To do that in America, which supposedly champions open elections, is outrageous and intolerable. But that is just what the Commission on Presidential Debates has done.” – Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel editorial
In 2012 I was Free and Equal Election Foundation’s communications director and co-produced the two “3rd Party” presidential debates that were moderated by Larry King and Thom Hartmann and viewed by an estimated global audience of 20 million people. A number of us who worked with Free & Equal then have even bigger plans moving forward.
We believe that with laying the groundwork down now, we can create debates that are viewed by far more than 20 million people and hope to help restore honest presidential debates in America by creating public demand for the candidates on our stages to be included in the debates held by the Commission on Presidential Debates. If they don’t open their debates, we intend to continue running debates at the same time theirs are scheduled.
Our 4 point plan to restore open and honest debates in 2016 can be found at http://opendebates2016.com/
The media project I’m working with now – http://benswann.com/ – is with an eye on creating relationships with people in other organizations and media outlets that will potentially help with the 2016 plan.
We are currently looking for organizations, companies, media outlets and individuals that would be interested in joining a coalition to help make these debates as big a success as possible, and hope you would consider joining with – http://ivn.us/ – http://www.saveamericafoundation.com – http://www.freetalklive.com/ – http://www.endpartisanship.com/ – some of the coalition already aboard. We plan on really shaking things up!
In Liberty, Zak Carter
206-551-8704