Wikipedia Approach Attempts to Transform Politics

Larry Lessig, a law professor at Stanford hopes that a 'Wikipedia' approach can help change the way politics are played. He wants to use collaborative software to keep track of political positions candidates take and hold them accountable to pledges they make.

He has come up with an ambitious plan called "Change Congress". The plan calls for candidates to better publicize their political positions by filling out a form at the organization's web site, which then formulates code that provides a graphic that the candidates can then place on their election campaign web sites.

The Change Congress project hopes that citizens will track congressional candidates' positions on these issues by reporting on them at the web site. The project will then map these results onto a Google map.

Lessig writing in "The Huffington Post" explained:
"once this wiki-army has tracked the positions of all Members of Congress, we will display a map of reform, circa 2008: Each Congressional district will be colored in either (1) dark red, or dark blue, reflecting Republicans or Democrats who have taken a pledge, (2) light red or light blue, tracking Republicans and Democrats who have not taken our pledge, but who have signaled support for planks in the Change-Congress platform, or (3) for those not taking the pledge and not signaling support for a platform of reform, varying shades of sludge, representing the percentage of the Member's campaign contributions that come from PACs or lobbyists."

This is not the first time wiki's have been used to influence politics. Wikileaks.org a site dedicated to allowing users to post leaked materials with the goal of discouraging “unethical behavior” by corporations and governments was ordered shutdown a few weaks back by a court testing 1st ammendment right. Wikileaks.org does show though the power of community driven websites can have an impact on politics.

I think if Lessig can pull this off he'll transform politics and place more power in the hands of the people, where it belongs, and not the hands of the elite few in Washington.

Edsor3
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http://www.outervillage.com
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