A group of Reddit users think that Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX.), author of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), has got to go — and they’ve formed a Political Action Committee, or PAC, to give him the boot.

TestPAC was first formed in January in the aftermath of the Internet community’s widespread backlash against SOPA. The PAC evolved from the “Operation: Pull Ryan” Reddit movement that targeted Rep. Paul Ryan for his SOPA support.

Immediately, says Jeromie Whalen, PAC’s chair, the group started picking up an astonishing amount of skilled people for its all-volunteer membership. Every single one of TestPAC’s decisions are based on a democratic vote amongst members.

“The great thing about this is that everyone involved, we take their input and we have debates and discussions, we put things up to vote and ultimately it’s the voice of the participants that’s heard here,” says Whalen.

According to Whalen, the problem with all of the anti-SOPA activity on Reddit was a lack of an outlet to express all of the community’s opinions and frustrations with the political process. TestPAC came about to fill that gap.

The PAC has already raised just under $10,000, with an overall war chest goal of $25,000.

How is TestPAC spending that money? It’s already bought a massive billboard in Smith’s backyard of San Antonio, Texas and it’s running an anti-Smith ad across Texas — and the designs of both were voted upon by the membership. The PAC expects the billboard to be seen by at least 400,000 people every week.

The PAC isn’t directly supporting either of Smith’s GOP challengers, so they had to be creative when designing the billboard and TV ad. Their ad agency wouldn’t let TestPAC run a negative ad against Smith without being in favor of some other candidate.

“Our objective here is to target the primary election and make this a cause in the primary election, where we have a much greater chance of defeating him and getting someone else who has an anti-SOPA stance and is pro-Internet rights,” says Whalen.

“We were put in a predicament where we couldn’t run negative ad, yet we couldn’t support other opponents. So we played off the fact that Richard Morgan and Richard Mack (Smith’s opponents) are both Richard M.”

TestPAC has its sights set on defeating Smith in the Republican primary, because historically, he’s handily defeated Democratic challengers.

Texas’ primary, scheduled for May 29, is also an open primary — meaning anybody can vote in it regardless of party affiliation, although Democrats voting in a Republican primary surrender their vote in their own party’s primary.

Whalen isn’t concerned about the other stances of Smith’s opponents. Rather, TestPAC is all about taking down Smith while giving the tech community a political mechanism to defend digital rights.

“I would say that our biggest concern is removing Lamar Smith from Congress, due to the fact that he has made it clear he would rather listen to corporate entertainment rather than his constituents,” says Whalen.

“We want to make TestPAC a campaign for national awareness for the rights of Americans in the digital age.”

Do you think TestPAC can defeat Lamar Smith in the upcoming Texas primary? Sound off in the comments below.

Images courtesy of Flickr, talkradionews