The NewGov Politician Support System

Nutshell:
 
Politicians care mostly about money and votes. The NewGov Politician support system equips voters to support and manage politicians like coaches manage players: withhold money and votes from uncooperative politicians and find and elect better ones.

In practice, NewGov helps you manage your politicians as easily as you manage your iTunes:
   Rate, Promote, Collect, Discard them & never attend a party meeting.

Why? Because there is no system of collaboration sites for constituents to surround their politician with candor, collaboration and criticism. A site owned by the government, a party or a politician doesn't provide this.

NewGov: two parts that work together.

Part 1: a set of spaces, one per US representative.
The spaces are for constituents to meet, talk, and influence their reps.		 Part 2: a Facebook app for voters to pledge action. 

David Weinberger, Ph.D.: "The trick is that the app is set up so the rep can be certain that the citizen is in fact one of her/his constituents."

NewGov's Facebook Application Services


  1. Voter home page, with politician action panels
  2. Candidates for each office you vote for.
  3. Dashboard: Politicians you've "touched" in any way.
  4. Vote and Money Pledge manager.
  5. Vote bombs: Vote challenges you've issued or supported.
  6. Causes: the Facebook Causes you've sent to politicians.
  7. Invite Friends to join the NewGov project.
  1. Politician Action Panel elements:
  1. Become a certified constituent to make politicians listen.
  2. Say Yes-No as a snap indicator of support.
  3. Pledge your vote with a firm calendar commitment.
  4. OWN your politicians: pledge to vote in the Primary.
  5. Pledge money to your favorite politicians.
  6. Form a powerful voting bloc with a Facebook Cause.
  7. Send a smiley or frown, etc., to your representatives.

Documents and links
DGSNA Social Networks
How Citizens can Aggregate their Money and Votes to Define Digital Government		 A paper written by Britt Blaser, David Weinberger and Joe Trippi, accepted by the Digital Government Society of North America for presentation at its annual conference, May 2009. 
USA 3.0 Returning to the Founders' Vision by adding direct voter oversight of lawmakers in Virtual Political Districts
NewGov Federation How the Virtual Political Districts relate to the NewGov Facebook app
DGSNA paper compared to the iVote4U Federation Compares the recommendations in the DGSNA paper to the services provided by the NewGov communities andFacebook app
Power of Constituents Why constituent communication is so much more effective than email or nonprofit campaigns, based on research by John Hird, Georgetown Univ.
Activist Guide How to harness constituents to manage legislation in committees
Virtual Leaders How "Virtual Leaders" can be a powerful force in politics
Benefits handout A single page overview, oriented to tech-savvy political activists
Misty Smith goes to Washington How a newcomer can use iVote4U to challenge an entrenched incumbent
Buzz, People and MoneyUse Blog posts and comments to raise Buzz, People and Money
Verified Voter Benefits Why blocs of certified constituents matter so much.
Analysis based on Power, Knowledge and Politics, John Hird, 2005
Dean Campaign papers Britt Blaser's papers and documents developed in 2003-4

Who's behind the NewGov system?

The design and vision is provided by the Independence Year Foundation, a Delaware Not-for-Profit corporation. The Facebook NewGov app leverages the community and connectivity of the world's largest social network.

The 585+ virtual political jurisdictions are designed, built, hosted, maintained and supported by the companies who built and support whitehouse.gov: Acquia Inc. and Phase2 Technology.

The Tragedy of the Netroots

Britt Blaser

As a volunteer for the Howard Dean campaign, I guess I helped start the "Netroots" - the net-savvy people who put grassroots campaigning online, leading to Obama’s success. I’ve come to realize that, in many ways, the netroots is old wine in new bottles. It’s hard to know if it has had any greater effect, proportionately, than direct mail politics in the 1950s. A similar “revolution”, direct mail was the first way that campaigns could reach voters directly without the media filter. Both used new media to elect the same politicians, who then operate the same obsolete way.

Among those obsolescent patterns is politicians' willful disregard of their constituents’ preferences. Every day we are urged to "tell your representative to ……………." But our pleas, if we even make them, never match a cause with a voter who matters to an Olivia Snowe or Max Baucus. These messages are as futile as yelling at the support tech that their web site sucks.

If you don’t feel impotent about effecting change, you don’t understand the real game in politics as well as Matt Taibbi does.

The iVote4U system is fundamentally different. It's about governance, not politics. Using iVote4U, you don’t care much who your politician is. Instead, you "push" your interests to him/her and make it clear that how the politician votes in Congress will affect how you will vote in the next primary election.

The most valuable resource in politics is a voter who shows up at a primary election. Like diamonds, they’re valuable because they’re scarce. Primary voters matter so much because most elections are safely Democrat or Republican. All the nuttiness we see in Congress is about primary elections, not the general. iVote4U gives certified constituents a way to use their primary vote pledges to give political cover to politicians who act on principle, so they don't have to pander to the zealots who show up for the primary.

Like those zealots, iVote4U primary voters are loyal to a cause but not a party, but their loyalty stems from rational curating of a politician’s actions for years, with real consequences for the incumbent or challenger in the next primary election.

Called “Super Voters,” they are 3rd-party certified constituents, pledged to vote in the next primary, who are watching the politician’s actions, and will vote accordingly.

There is no greater threat or benefit to a politician’s career.