Deborah Bowen tweeted the other day about the use of social media for voter education. Here's an idea. Thing is, people get voting recommendations through their social networks. I don't know about you, but when I'm looking at initiatives, downballot races, and other nonobvious choices, I look to maven friends who have some knowledge and perspective. The standard voters guides are somewhat useful, but they lack the perspective of a knowlegeable friend.
So, the opportunity is to have a social network application that enables mavens to fill out sample ballots (in full or in part). For each choice, the maven can add a comment and links to provide explanation and reference about their choice. Anyone can be a maven by filling out part of a ballot and explaining their choice.
Voters can choose to follow one or more "mavens". Mavens who are connected and well-respected will gain more followers. The maven's activities can be visible in an existing social network (e.g. Facebook, Twitter), so people can discover mavens in their social network. A maven can choose to have their profile and ballot be "public" (anyone can follow them), "private" - they need to approve new followers before followers can see their choices, or "networked" - your friends friends can see your ballot.
The system can display top "public" mavens, so followers can discover new sources of recommendations. Voters should be able to see the public and networked mavens followed by their friends.
This system would build on the existing social networks people use to make voter decisions, and would expose people to a wider range of information and opinion through the social network. Experts and influential people would rise to visibility. The ability to share comments and links will drive education around the ballot. And the roots of the system in the social network ought to encourage civil behavior, which could be severely problematic in a public opinion-oriented system.
What do you think? The comments on this blog are still broken (I'm planning to upgrade to fix the problem this coming weekend), so send email at alevin at alevin dot com with comments and I'll post).
Aaron Antrim wrote a sensible Facebook note downplaying the concept of the digital divide as it relates to giving digital access to transit information. In the world of public transit, there's a common argument that it is unfair and wrong to provide excellent digital access to transit information, since some elderly and low-income riders do not have access to digital information.
These days, a lot of people have internet access. Aaron points out recent statistics showing that overall, 75% of U.S. adults use the internet, and 56% of people who make less than $30,000/year use the internet. In the Bay Area, the overall numbers are higher, and the low-income numbers are similar: 79% had internet access in 2008, including 59% of households with income under $40,000.
It's fair to be concerned with the digital divide. But the everybody or nobody approach is poor business judgment. What company would reject a service that broadened their market, because only 60-80% of their customer base would use it?