Structured Twitter feeds, filtered and stored, could be the basis for a comprehensive voting advice system that makes Big Money irrelevant to elections.
Initial Implementation & Resources
An initial implementation for voting advice can be built on top of Twitter. Local advice can be shared in a town, state-level advice in a state, and so on.
Voting Advice is NOT Online Voting
Various proposals have been made for online voting systems. But security issues present a huge obstacle. The voting advice system is not the same as a vote collection system.
Designing a Voting Advice System
These are the initial ideas for I had for the implementation of a voting advice system. I have since come to believe that filtered Twitter feeds make the best vehicle for giving and receiving advice, but there is much in this article that is worth referring to — especially with regard to what makes it an effective way for an organization (political or otherwise) to reach people.
Voting Advice Technologies
We already have the technologies needed to implement a
Voting Advice System. A bit of customizing is needed, but there is nothing radically new that needs to be developed.
Voting Advice Hashtags
Twitter style #hashtags are the girders that allow voting advice to travel down the information highway. They identify ballot choices, allowing advice that is needed to find its destination, while other advice flows right on by, unintrusive and invisible.The #hashtags need to be unique, so they do not conflict with each other, and they need to be divided into namespaces, so they are easy to construct without fear of conflict with other hashtags.
Receiving and Filtering Advice
Voting advice is given in the form of a blog post, or advice tweet, that is delivered through an advice stream. The technology that makes such a stream possible is known as an RSS feed (a source that provides information to subscribers).