Change.gov Uses Google Moderator System

GMonkeyLouie writes "The website for President-elect Obama's transition team, Change.gov, has unveiled a section called Open for Questions, which lets users submit questions and vote them up or down, in an effort to let the collaborative mind produce the questions that are the most important to the American populace (or at least the web-savvy portion). The page is powered by Google Moderator. It was unveiled yesterday, and CNet reports that when they went to post last night, '159,890 had voted on 1,986 questions from 3,255 people.'"

Comments

Transparently Inconvenient

[Anonymous Coward]

The website allows for greater transparency... or greater ability to bury unwanted/uncomfortable questions while seeming more transparent.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1208/Blagojevich_questions_censored_on_Transition_site.html?showall

Re:Ahh, true democracy

[m4cph1sto]

I'm quite glad we live in a republic, where the stupid elect those who have demonstrated they at least have machiavellian intelligence. It's fortunate for all of us that one breed of intelligence usually includes others as well. -_-

Does it really? This report begs to differ. Elected officials are actually dumber than the general public, at least when it comes to civic literacy: Elected Officials Score Lower than the General Public In Civic Literacy Test

Re:Ahh, true democracy

[gumbobear]

The Federalist Papers were, objectively speaking, propaganda pieces written to persuade the states to adopt the Constitution. This is not to disparage them, but it's just a reminder that they were not neutral analytical pieces, they were persuasive works.

The structural mechanisms described were put in place for 2 reasons. First, because many viewed the federal government as a creation of the states (not from we the people). Second, it protects state sovereignty against federal encroachment. Thus the states could reign in a national government that some were afraid would be less representative of the people.

That's why the Bill of Rights does not, by a strict textual analysis, apply to the states. See Barron v. Mayor of Baltimore (a seminal John Marshall caase). At the time, no one suspected that the states would, in time, become the main oppressors of freedom.

But that's why Federalist 46 is interesting. Madison argues that the power of all governments, both state and national, originate from the people, and if in the future the people should choose to place their confidence in one or another, they should be empowered to do so.

So contrary to the popular "wisdom," the founding fathers were not as hostile to democracy as people like to claim. The Federalists (Adams) were afraid, but the Democrats (Jefferson) were all for it.