[1] Silver formerly worked as CEO and co-founder of Free Press, an "activist group that promotes accountability journalism and Internet openness".

[2] He was the director of development for a cultural arm of the Smithsonian Institution, and was the campaign manager of the successful 1998 "Clean Elections" ballot measure in Arizona.

He advocates using the term "corruption" to describe the combined influence of lobbying, the "revolving door", and campaign contributions, as well as broken election laws that foster extremism and block competition.

[citation needed] Silver argues that past democracy reform efforts have failed partly because they were overly focused on appealing to the political Left and/or overly focused on passing reform legislation through Congress; he points out that members of Congress, who have achieved their positions under current election and campaign finance laws, are unlikely to approve legislation that would change those laws in order to increase political competition and/or limit the influence of the special interests and moneyed donors who have financed their political careers.

[5] Silver advocates a grassroots campaign of citizen-led legislative lobbying and ballot initiatives passed at the city and state level to fix policy locally while building momentum towards national reform.