Wired covered Lawrence Lessig’s launch of the Change Congress movement.

The Change Congress project’s first mission is to diminish the influence of money in the legislative body by influencing the outcome of the 2008 election campaigns of 67 members of congress which are up for grabs. As the Change Congress project founder Larry Lessig noted in the project’s launch Thursday afternoon, there haven’t been so many seats open up for challenge in more than a decade.

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“The problem we face is … the problem of crony capitalism using money to capture government,” he said on Monday during the launch of his project in Washington, DC. “The challenge is whether in fact we can change this. The political experts tell you that it can’t be done..”

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Lessig says that the project will, down the road, model itself on Emily’s List in that it will recruit contributors to finance candidates who make reforming congress a central part of their campaign.

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In an interview, Lessig says that for now, he’s going to focus on motivating people to volunteer their time to research members of congress’ positions on transparency, accountability and public financing of campaigns.

“If you give them a big vision, and talk about all the good things that will come out of it, then I think a lot of people will be willing to do the wiki work [at home] in their pajamas,” he says. “The hard thing is getting them to go to rallies and getting them to call their congressman.”

Lessig says that his goal is to raise $500,000 to fund the project for the year by May 1. He hopes to hire a couple of staffers in the San Francisco bay area and an executive director.

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Lessig says that he anticipates that each district will have voters who will monitor their members’ activities and report on them.

“If you violate the pledge, you’ve created a huge opportunity for people to attack you,” he says.

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