^^A Model for Mass Collaboration in Representative Electoral Systems.

Instead of electing geographically based representatives in a winner take all contest, the legislative branches of government be made up of representatives who have the support of a threshold number of citizens. These citizens can live anywhere in the country – there is no need for neighbors to be forced to choose from a single slate of candidates. And there would be no election day – a citizen could withdraw support for his representative at any time on three months notice, and transfer it to someone else. As long as a legislator maintained more than the threshold number of supporters, she would remain a legislator. The drama of election night (and the pomp and vacuity of election campaigns) would disappear.

This would eliminate several current problems:

• there would be no “votes cancelling each other out”. Each citizen would have the representative that they wanted
• the diversity of opinion and backgrounds in the legislature would much better reflect the opinions and backgrounds in the whole populations, and lead to a much more wiki-like political system
• the wholesale pandering for votes, and the accompanying half-truths, that are the hallmark of election campaigns, would disappear
• the disruption that occurs to the work of governments in the months leading up to, and the weeks following, elections would be eliminated
• the cost and complexity and attacks associated with running campaigns would decrease, encouraging more people to put themselves forward for office and decreasing the hold that groups with money have on the political process.

• leaders and political superstars would be both strengthened and weakened. Politics would be dominated by a smaller number of superstars, however if there were to be no "rep by pop" among legislators it would cause very odd dynamics.

This process much better reflects the massively connected, many-to-many communication that is the foundation of our society. It’s fluidity and empowerment of the individual better meet the expectations that we as citizens have in our lives.

Since 1999, I have explored the different ways that politicians and people use the Internet for political and social activism - email, websites, blogs, and wikis.

The beauty of wikis is collaboration. I thought it wold be interesting to see if collaborative efforts could provide useful information concerning the 2008 Presidential Election.

I created a
Sincerely,

Alan