What Would Thomas Jefferson Make Of e-Democracy?
The movement to harness technology to democratize American democracy is gaining traction. Is that a good thing? During the heated presidential campaign of 2008, the CNN/YouTube debate proved so popular that eventual president Barack Obama held Open for Questions, an interactive program in which citizens submitted questions for the president via YouTube. Almost 93,000 people submitted just south of 104,000 questions, resulting in over 3 million votes to decide which questions most warranted a presidential response, which the president submitted March 26 in the first-ever online town hall from the White House. Now, the Fraser Institute, an independent research organization in Canada, is conducting a first-of-its-kind essay competition to decide what they will study. Entitled the Essay Contest for Excellence in the Pursuit of Measurement, the competition has already solicited entries from as far as India and China and will award $10,000 to the winner. “The idea is to get people’s opinions
