Google, in partnership with CNN, has paired Google Moderator and YouTube (says Google, the first time the tools the video platform and voting platform have been joined) to create Raise Your Voice, a hub for collecting and vetting video questions that will be put to world leaders during the upcoming Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen -- though it's not exactly clear from the platform how many questions while make it from YouTube to the press conference on CNN, or how the video submissions be integrated into the event. Word is that, alas, the snowman from the '08 YouTube primary debates won't be able to submit a question, having melted earlier this fall.

I'm not sure how unique this is amongst state and local candidates, but here's a sign that what might be called the Obama model of digital politics is trickling down to lower ticket races. It was perhaps under-commented upon during the Open for Question days that the new president of the United States chose to use a completely no-cost tool freely available to the rest of us, rather than go the proprietary route. That means that every ambitious candidate down to the town council level can mimic some of Obama's efforts. Here, Tom Campbell, a Republican candidate for California governor, is using Google Moderator to solicit ideas on the budget, water, schools, and more. Campbell explains above.

For the record, the top three questions by each sub-topic on WhiteHouse.gov today are listed below. I'll come back later to mark up the ones that were actually asked.

The prophet is having second thoughts. In comments that have received remarkably scant coverage on this side of the pond, Clay Shirky, while in London last month promoting the release of Here Comes Everybody in paperback, said the following: “All the rhetoric, including - I'm embarrassed to say - some of mine, has assumed in the past that democratic legitimation is itself enough to regard aggregate public opinion [online] as being clearly binding on the government. I've changed my mind.” This is a momentous admission from someone as influential as Shirky, and timely, as the White House hires former Google exec’s into new positions like the “Director of Citizen Participation,” and considers its web strategy for involving Americans in Federal policy-making. The good people making these decisions at 1600 Pennsylvania have some tough jobs, since the challenges to national level online participation are inherent in both the available web tools, and in the nature of our representative government system.

From the campaign through the transition period participation has been kept to the crowd-sourcing of questions or priorities, which have been, ostensibly, passed on to then candidate (or his staff), and now, President. The crowdsourcing tool, “Moderator” was released by Google last September, and, like the candidate who used it, went from long shot to prime-time in a matter of months. Interestingly, as described by its lead project engineer, Talliver Heath, local governments were the original target market for Moderator. They would use it to elicit and evaluate questions or concerns of local import. In an interview with the tech site, Ars Technica, Heath propounded, “How many city council meetings have you been to? How about school boards? There are always questions you may have about the running of your city, town, state, etc. I believe a public application like Moderator can make civil participation significantly higher in local governments." So from prioritizing policy questions like trash pick-up, and teacher pay, then President-elect Obama, had the tool installed onto his Transition website: Change.gov.

Remember two years ago when Senator Richard Durbin took the blogosphere and specifically MyDD.com and RedState.com for a series of open thread discussions about shaping a broadband bill? "Legislation 2.0" got some attention at the time, but then the Durbin staffer who was responsible for shepherding the process reportedly went back to graduate school, and little more was heard of the notion.

Well, something new seems to be taking hold, that we might call "Legislation 2.0.2" because it looks like a restart of the same idea, albeit with somewhat better tools for public input and engagement. First Rep. Mike Honda called for input on redesigning his website and opening up the relationship between citizens and their representatives. Now Senate Claire McCaskill is asking the public for input on how to do a better job with government contracting oversight, as part of her job as chair of the Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight.