Decius wrote:

If, based on their zip code, voters could access wiki based information about upcoming local and federal races and referenda items relevant to their districts, working families would have a powerful and democratic information resource at their disposal in the ballot box.

If by wiki you mean writeable by anyone... it seems like the wikispam and wikiattacks would render the system unusable.

Around here, we have the League of Women Voters, as well as prominent left and right newspapers having dedicated election sections. Would it be nice to have a place for individuals to transcribe all the bits they know about a particular candidate? Certainly. Could you imagine that source being even remotely less biased than the League of Women Voters? I can't.

dmv wrote:
If by wiki you mean writeable by anyone... it seems like the wikispam and wikiattacks would render the system unusable.

Just like they render wikipedia unusable.

Could you imagine that source being even remotely less biased than the League of Women Voters? I can't.

Unfortunately the LWV doesn't provide the depth of coverage in Georgia that a real voter information guide does. They often don't have all the races covered, they don't have responses from all of the politicians, or the responses they got were not adequate. I think what they do is very important in lieu of a better source, but it is not sufficient. Have you ever lived in California?

Rattle wrote:

If, based on their zip code, voters could access wiki based information about upcoming local and federal races and referenda items relevant to their districts, working families would have a powerful and democratic information resource at their disposal in the ballot box.

I've discussed this idea with Decius in depth. A Wiki voter guide would be possible, but extremely hard. In terms of spam and attacks, this would pose the greatest challenge to the Wiki format either of us can think of. No content would be as charged as a voter guide.

Even seeding the Wiki would be tough. Just finding out who is running in what district and what zip codes cover a district is non-trivial.

I think the key would be having an independent and trusted-by-both-sides moderator. For example, if you look at the GeorgeWBush entry at wikipedia, and then look at the "talk" page, you can see that there are some people who are militant about keeping "POV" stuff off the page. And as a result, things stay (relatively) balanced. I think the same system could work for other candidates -- it would just be a case of finding people who'd have the time and ability to moderate it fairly.

Rattle wrote:

If, based on their zip code, voters could access wiki based information about upcoming local and federal races and referenda items relevant to their districts, working families would have a powerful and democratic information resource at their disposal in the ballot box.

I've discussed this idea with Decius in depth. A Wiki voter guide would be possible, but extremely hard. In terms of spam and attacks, this would pose the greatest challenge to the Wiki format either of us can think of. No content would be as charged as a voter guide.

Even seeding the Wiki would be tough. Just finding out who is running in what district and what zip codes cover a district is non-trivial.

Cialis for president.

Seriously though, it's an excellent idea. Seeding wouldn't be that bad , at least in heavily wired areas. You could simply implore users to fill in information on their own constituencies and branch out only in areas that have a lack of users. There's no easy way around the spam thing without making it somewhat of a pain to moderate though.