As early as 1902 he had begun printing and smuggling literature across the border into Russia promoting democracy and socialism. In 1906 he was a co-founder of Nordens Klippe, a decidedly socialist Norwegian mineworkers union. Left and Labour Party In 1900 Egede-Nissen was first elected to the Storting, representing the Liberal Party for the Hammerfest-Vardø-Vadsø electoral area. During his first term in parliament, he was a member of the Standing Committee on Roads (1900–1903). During some of his time in parliament, fellow socialist Thorolf Bugge, who had worked in the Vardø post office with him since 1898, served as acting postmaster there (1901 to 1906). Having been re-elected in 1903, Egede-Nissen broke with the Liberals in 1905 and joined the Labour Party in the Storting, becoming one of its leaders. He was re-elected for the Labour Party at the next two parliamentary elections in 1906 and 1909, representing the same constituency as before. From 1903 through 1912 he was a member of the Standing Committee on the Military, and during the years from 1906 to 1912 the Storting elected him as a member of the Lagting. Views on neutrality and disarmament Egede-Nissen gained prominence during the August 1909 parliamentary debate on army reorganization, espousing the then radical ideas of neutrality and military disarmament. Views on temperance and prohibition From 1910 he served as one of nine members of a parliamentary alcohol commission which was mandated to chart Norway's future laws on the sale of wine, beer and distilled spirits. The Storting adopted their 1918 majority report, in which the commission recommended that all importation and sale of alcohol be conducted through controlled storehouses (samlag), the profits of which flowed into the Norwegian Treasury (Statskassen), while breweries and distilleries remained privately owned — a position held by a six-member majority of the committee. Egede-Nissen and Sven Aarrestad, parliamentary leader of the Temperance Party (Avholdspartiet), however, contended that the government should restrict the legal sale of alcohol by allowing individual municipalities to vote to ban its local sale and set a goal of eventually achieving national prohibition, at least of distilled spirits, whilst a third dissenter, famed Norwegian physician and psychiatrist Johan Scharffenberg, supported an immediate total prohibition of all liquor sales, characterizing alcohol as "this nerve poison that turns people into animals." Resignation from Stortinget Having become Stavanger's postmaster in 1911, he declined to stand for re-election in the 1912 election,