Part 1: a set of spaces, one per US representative.

Where constituents meet, talk, and influence their reps.

Part 2:

Where voters pledge to take 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, iVote4U:

1. A.Voter home page, with politician action panels
   

2. B.Candidates for each office you vote for.
   

3. C.Dashboard: Politicians you've "touched" in any way.
   

4. D.Vote and Money Pledge manager.
   

5. E.Vote bombs: Vote challenges you've issued or supported.
   

6. F.Causes: the Facebook Causes you've sent to politicians.
   

7. G.Invite Friends to join the NewGov project.

DGSNA Social Networks

How Citizens can Aggregate their Money and Votes to Define Digital Government

USA 3.0

NewGov Federation

DGSNA paper compared to the iVote4U Federation

Power of Constituents

Activist Guide

Virtual Leaders

Benefits handout

Misty Smith goes to Washington

Buzz, People and Money

Verified Voter Benefits

Dean Campaign papers

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. 

Returning to the Founders' Vision by adding direct voter oversight of lawmakers in Virtual Political Districts.

How the Virtual Political Districts relate to the NewGov Facebook app.

Compares the recommendations in the DGSNA paper to the services provided by the NewGov communities andFacebook app.

Why constituent communication is so much more effective than email or nonprofit campaigns, based on research by John Hird, Georgetown Univ.

How to harness constituents to manage legislation in committees.

How "Virtual Leaders" can be a powerful force in politics.

A single page overview, oriented to tech-savvy political activists.

How a newcomer can use iVote4U to challenge an entrenched incumbent.

Use Blog posts and comments to raise Buzz, People and Money.

Why blocs of certified constituents matter so much.

Analysis based on Power, Knowledge and Politics, John Hird, 2005.

Britt Blaser's papers and documents developed in 2003-4 when embedded with the Howard Dean campaign.

Documents and links

Who's behind the NewGov system?

The vision and architecture is provided by the not-for-profit Independence Year Foundation, which also developed the Facebook iVote4U app to leverage the community and connectivity of the world's largest social network. There’s also a variant of the federal Facebook app to serve New York City’s 9 million people, 5 boroughs and 61 City Council districts.

The 585+ virtual political jurisdictions are being 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 on politics, proportionately, than direct mail 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’ interests. 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 Olympia Snowe or Max Baucus. These messages are as futile as yelling at tech support that their company’s web site sucks.

The NewGov system is fundamentally different. It's about governance, not politics. Using NewGov, 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.

And if you vote in the primary, your voice is amplified a hundred times over, because 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, NewGov 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 “Verified 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.

A

A