Polling Blogcitizens Swamping Frist. David Isenberg points out that Senate Major Leader Bill "Secnod" Frist is running an online poll about Iraq. This mroning when I went to regsiter my vote, the site reprots that the server is too busy. Concrened citizens or danmed 'bots?... [Joho the Blog]
Despite the technical difficulties, there is an important need here. Congressional offices have to rely on polling data from an increasingly consolidated set of sources and media companies. They need better and more diverse data.
Blogcitizens are a unique constituency could be more easily polled than most and needs to be understood. Joi's emergent democracy paper highlighted the prospect and importance of polling to inform political decision makers. In the Distribution of Influence I made the point that these tools could evolve to interface with decision makers.
There is a unique opportunity to leverage the technical skills of early adopters of weblogs to establish a polling infrastructure. Servicing the infrastruture would require the establishment of a body, not necessarily an institution, to govern and administrate its low cost functions under trust. Blogging grows so to will the constituency as a representative sample.
The first poll would be designed to reveal what the constituency represents. From there, the selection of topics to be polled could emerge from group-based competition of ideas.
10:44:28 AM 
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