[Campaigns-l] Lessons we can learn from

[Steven Clift]

Greetings all.  I've blogged seven lessons I've picked up from over a 
decade of direct experience with non-partisan attempts to use the 
Internet to promote citizen engagement in elections. I created the 
world's first election-oriented website in 1994. Like the Campaigns 
Wikia effort it was volunteer-based, so I am quite interested in how 
to help this effort make a difference in 2006 and beyond.

The full text of my blog post with dozens of links is here:

    http://www.dowire.org/notes/?p=244

Among other things, I (http://publicus.net) host an e-mail 
newsletter/blog on democracy and the Internet which reaches over 2500 
folks in 100 countries.  Sign-up for e-mail delivery here:
    http://groups.dowire.org/groups/newswire
More info/blog/wiki/etc.: http://dowire.org

Cheers,
Steven Clift


... intro clipped ...

Steven Clift´s Lessons for Improving Elections Online


1. The vast majority of candidates (political parties outside U.S. 
context) will only do online what is politically imperative or viewed 
as required by political competition. The democratically interactive 
exceptions online emanate from extremely rare individuals involved 
with campaigns not stopped by normally risk adverse campaign 
managers.

    Response: The negative consequences of not participating must 
    outweigh the campaign´s predominate expectation that no real voters 
    will care. Campaigns will do something online if they think it will 
    generate free positive media or avoid likely negative public 
    attention. Time limited, asynchronous, online candidate debates 
    (diagram) I´ve worked on, like those hosted by E-Democracy.Org 
    starting in 1994 and the Web White & Blue Presidential online debate 
    in 2000 met the online competitive environment requirement.

2. Candidates only care about THEIR voters during election periods. 
Those outside the district need to be campaign donors to have any 
relevancy.

    Response: To engage candidates, the online system must be 
    geographically relevant because that is how most electoral districts 
    are based. National-based "non-partisan" election issue information 
    is only relevant outside the Presidential campaign if specifically 
    tailored to area candidates/districts.

3. Candidates view the Internet as a way to raise money and organize 
core supporters not engage voters.

    Response: The REAL challenge of any non-partisan effort online is to 
    present actual undecided or persuadable voters to competing 
    candidates. Television advertising, often negative, is the primary 
    way to reach this group which determines who wins elections. There is 
    an online solution somewhere, but very nature of the online medium 
    where user choose what to read/view/listen to makes often less 
    engaged undecided/persuadable voters the most difficult to persuade 
    to click through. Most candidate do a terrible job of promoting their 
    websites online. Perhaps Campaigns Wikia can simply make candidates 
    easier to find via search engines.

4. The problem is not "broadcast campaigning" it stoking a fire under 
broadcast voters. Candidates down the ballot are often extremely 
conversational one-on-one and in small group meetings. Participatory 
media should first be used to create participatory citizens. We will 
be waiting a long long time for "candidates who build genuinely 
participative campaigns by generating and expanding genuine 
communities of engaged citizens."

(I am actually a fan of political blogging. It just isn´t about 
bringing people from across the political spectrum together. On 
DoWire.Org I am hosting an international tactical online community of 
practice on the topic (debates on political issues are not allowed): 
http://groups.dowire.org/groups/polblog )

    Response: Civically-spirited citizens need to take the lead and 
    create local or geographically defined online participatory spaces. 
    These conversational many-to-many spaces must be hosted in a trusted 
    non-partisan "public" manner and attract area citizens (voters) from 
    multiple political perspectives. If such forums are made up of real 
    voters and play an agenda-setting role through the generation of new 
    public opinion and influence on the local media, candidates and 
    elected officials will monitor them and sometimes participate when it 
    makes political sense. Most politicians will not publicly participate 
    in any activity without a perceivable benefit no matter the moral 
    imperative or call to civic duty. (E-Democracy.Org hosts local Issues 
    Forums in this manner in the U.S. and the UK: e-democracy.org/if )

5. The political blogosphere is an extension of television-style 
broadcast punditry. While political blogging does represent a 
democratization of the "pundit panel" on television, most (not all of 
course) political bloggers are not motivated by civic goals such as 
abstractly improving the electoral process - they want their side or 
perspective to win. They are partisans first.

    Response: The Campaigns Wikia should broaden their volunteer appeal 
    to civic-minded citizens. Perhaps even say things like, "stop 
    political bloggers from further destroying civility in elections" or 
    something. :-) Also, Campaigns Wikia should map out where the 
    information gaps are in promoting informed voting. In the U.S., check 
    in with folks like the League of Women Voters Education Fund, take a 
    look at Project Vote Smart and work to get candidates to fill out 
    their NPAT issue position forms (perhaps you can convince them to 
    release the responses under a creative commons license so you too can 
    carry the data), and the only sites that seem to keep up with 
    candidate websites Politics 1 and the (parts of) the Open Directory. 
    Also, the number one lesson from Web White & Blue in 1998 (archived 
    site) and 2000 - the major media sites attract the most eyeballs for 
    political content. Like we did with WWB, syndicate your content to 
    places where voters are online instead of expecting them to come to 
    you. On the international level, check out sites like Election Guide 
    for election dates.

6. Candidate data is essential. Once you have a campaign e-mail 
address or better yet a specific campaign contact you can inform them 
of new opportunities for their campaign to share information or 
respond to questions. Now, "if I had a millions dollars" ... I´d foster 
the creation of a database (creative commons most likely with 
restrictions on bulk use of e-mail addresses) all elective positions 
around the world, the geographic area(s) they represent, the term of 
service and detailed contact data on who currently occupies the 
position. During elections, the database would be adapted to include 
candidates.

    Response: You can effectively collect candidate directory details via 
    a wiki if you can reach the campaigns. Minneapolis E-Democracy did 
    this with our city elections in 2005.We´d like to do this with 
    Minnesota legislative candidates in 2006 but we are waiting for the 
    final state government election filings which happen to include e-
    mail addresses.

    To sustain the "million dollar" idea on an international basis, 
    governments would need an incentive/requirement to submit updated 
    "who is running/elected" information in standard formats. Perhaps the 
    Wikipedia/Campaigns Wikia volunteer base could build something like 
    this once, but keeping the data up-to-date at the local level may be 
    beyond volunteer capacity. If this database existed then all over the 
    world non-profit, media, and commercial sites could provide 
    geographically tailored access to candidate and election information. 
    (More importantly access to governance between elections can be 
    enhanced.)

    Along those lines, our volunteer-driven MyBallot.Net project has been 
    our most popular election content since we created the world´s first 
    election-oriented website in 1994. People love being able to type in 
    their address and find out who is on their ballot. We use Minnesota 
    government ballot data to do this, but unlike the government our 
    search is a starting point for exploring candidate information rather 
    than a non-linking dead-end. If others can get ballot data from their 
    state into the right format, we might be able to host it in 2006.

7. Voters need the most help down the ballot. High profile races like 
U.S. Senate, Governor and President get almost all of the media 
coverage. An online focus on such races will be attractive to 
volunteers, but when it comes to value-added content use it may be 
lost in a sea of information choices while races down the ballot 
remain an information desert.

    Response: Some sort of creative commons voter guide question and 
    answer database/system is required. Perhaps Campaigns Wikia could 
    create a template-based page that only the campaign in question can 
    edit to provide short answers to a standard set of questions for 
    local, state, and Congressional positions. Alternatively, volunteers 
    could fan out over candidate and media sites to try and put together 
    a best effort at finding candidate positions. Watch out for blow-back 
    for any errors as well as nefarious skullduggery. We´ve found that 
    people really like comparison charts. Within our online candidate 
    debates, tthe rapid fire short answer responses (under 100 words) are 
    positively received.

I hope you have found these lessons and opinions useful.

While are we planning to move our "thin directories" to U.S. election 
information sources to our wiki for 2008, E-Democracy.Org primarily 
focuses on locally-focused many-to-many citizen forums. Those 
inspired by Campaigns Wikia might also be excited by the possibility 
of starting an Issues Forums in their community. Check out our 60 
page "how to" guide and videos: e-democracy.org/if

One two punch ... perhaps we can find a good way to link Campaign 
Wikia content to any future local forums within electoral districts 
to make agenda-setting participatory elections a reality.

Sincerely,

Steven Clift - publicus.net/about.html - clift at publicus.net
Board Chair, E-Democracy.Org
Editor, Democracies Online Newswire - dowire.org
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Steven L. Clift    -   -  -  W: http://publicus.net
Minneapolis    -   -   -  -   E: clift at publicus.net
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