Governance by citizenry
How are we going to implement in governance the Net-based citizen involvement that the campaign has initiated? Here’s one idea.
Let’s say you care about the e-voting scandal that’s just waiting to happen. So, you go to your Senator’s site. There you find a “Citizen-to-Citizen” (C2C) page that lists the current issues constituents are discussing. A search for “e-voting” turns up nothing, so you are now prompted to create a C2C group on the topic. You write up your description of the problem and include some supporting links. Automatically, a new space is created with its own page and with the sort of collaborative capabilities were coming to expect: shared library, email archive, threaded discussion, maybe a MeetUp link, etc. Anyone who cares about the issue can find your space and join the conversation. (People can also register as caring about the issue without having to participate in the issue space.)
The site automatically reports metrics so that the most popular issues are surfaced. The Senator sees that there’s been a lot of activity in the e-voting issue space, votes to ban e-voting machines that don’t have some type of acceptable audit capability, and our democracy is saved. It’s just that simple!
Forget the implementation details. What I like about this ideas is its focus on connecting citizens who share interests, rather than on tabulating polls or instant ballots. It’s a way, potentially, of handling the scaling issues that turn citizens into data points. Democracy is a conversation, after all.
(This idea was sparked by conversations with Jock Gill and Britt Blaser, neither of whom should be assumed to agree with it.)
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Democracy as Conversation
Connecting people to politics
David,
Thanks for giving these ideas further exposure. Mitch Rattcliffe and I will have a post on this topic as well. Probably tomorrow. Our interest is in finding a way to move beyond the blunt instrument called the Ballot Initiative.
I think this needs to be a decentralized system. I want to see discussion from the constituents of other Senators, though a given Senator may want to focus on his own people.
(If it’s centralized, “they’ll” buy it from EDS for $100M. And it will cc Ashcroft.)
And in how many nanoseconds will these discussion boards be populated by paid astro-turf “citizen” lobby-bots?
Perhaps “Digital ID” will “save our democracy.”
Methinks a keener edge of cynicism is required.
Yes, we need to contact our Senators and Congressman. But it is equally important to contact our local Democratic and Republican committees. It is amazing how many politically active people do not know about this, or know very little. We should forward links such as http://www.CounttheVote.org and others to educate the local political activists.
We also need to keep sending those links to our local board of elections. Ask them to get rid of the machines, even if they have already signed contracts. There is this illusion that if the contract is awarded we are all going to give up and it will all blow over. We need to keep the pressure on.
I am also having this idea : imagine a website representing all the issues posted by citizens…not a government site , nor a senator one, just a public citizenship site supported by citizens.
Every other citizen , interested in some issues can post solutions, and the community rates all this stuff.
Statistics will show the most important issues and the best solutions (best at least from the community point of view)..
let’s get rid from pure politicians because they easily get corrupted..