Nearly two years ago, I helped pen a posting here, suggesting that politicians should embrace a new town hall format. The idea was that the Internet and user-ranked questions would help leverage a community's voice and provide real insight into the minds of constituents. Not only that, the Internet promised to grow the size of the town hall, putting more people "in the room" than ever before. This morning I watched the President's Internet Town Hall, comprised primarily of user-ranked questions, and I'm glad to see how far we've come. In fact, yesterday the General Services Administration announced agreements allowing the use of Flickr, YouTube, and Blip.tv by federal agencies, a large step in the right direction towrds meeting people where they're at on the Internet. However, these are only the first steps.

On the first full day of his presidency, Barack Obama issued an executive memo calling on the government to become more transparent, participatory and collaborative. He wrote:

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Of course, public participation is a two-way street. That's why, today, Personal Democracy Forum is proud to announce that we are partnering with a cross-partisan coalition of old and new media in launching "Ask the President," an open, collaborative, participatory forum where anyone can post a question and vote up their favorites. Our lead partners, The Nation magazine and The Washington Times, have committed to send a credentialed journalist to every presidential press conference armed with a list of the top citizen-driven questions, aiming to ask the President at least one generated by the public.

The way we interact with Government is about to change, and the shape of that change is up to us. The Internet is not just a way to raise money or mobilize supporters. It's a way to shrink the distance between people and politicians. For the first time in history, it's possible for hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people to have a single conversation. I'm not talking about the elimination of traditional news media or the implementation of a direct democracy. Expertise is important, and there will always be a need for professional journalists and public servants devoting all their energies towards government. I'm talking about adding a complementary channel, a new seat at the table.

The election is a week away, but two new online projects were just launched focusing on involving the public in what comes next. BigDialog.org and Whitehouse2.org are complimentary efforts that seek to crowd-source the process of putting pressing questions before the President-elect and identifying the top priorities of the public. We don't know yet if the next President will join in and respond, but if these sites garner a lot of participation, he'd be wise to pay attention.

We're not sure if there's going to be a presidential debate tomorrow night or not, but either way it can't hurt to highlight some of the ways viewers can participate in advance or during the actual event. Here's a fun list.

Last week I noted that John Edwards will be conducting an online forum on his website immediately following tomorrow’s CNN/YouTube debate. As Edwards explained to James Kotecki, people can submit questions for Edwards by using a form on his website, texting “DEBATE” to 30644, or through sites like Facebook, MySpace, Care2, or Twitter.

The forum will also be webcast on Edwards’ MySpace page, Ustream.tv (which lets people embed live streaming video), Care2, and David Colarusso’s Community Counts, which has been aggregating all of the videos submitted for the debate and letting people vote for their favorites.

Yesterday Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post remarked that “the signature moments of the campaign so far — the moments when it crossed over from C-SPAN to popular culture — have occurred on YouTube.” So true. Think about it: notwithstanding our criticisms of the upcoming CNN/YouTube debate, something new is definitely afoot.

[Eds. note: This is an editorial from the creators of Community Counts, a site that aggregates YouTube Spotlight videos and lets users vote for their favorites, with the goal of “compelling the candidates to answer the questions most valued by the community." We think the group offers a powerful argument for the importance of using YouTube to encourage a two-way conversation between voters and candidates.]

With the 2008 Presidential race underway, it’s clear the Internet is revolutionizing the process of campaigning. Fundraising, mobilization, and the announcement of candidacies have all migrated to the Web. Candidates join social networking sites like MySpace. Viral videos share gaffes alongside electioneered laughs, and the online debates are coming. What we haven’t seen, however, is that most tantalizing of potential benefits: a truly independent, open, and national dialogue—the flattening of democracy. To achieve this, citizens must use the Internet to harness the “wisdom of crowds” and then convince politicians to heed that wisdom.

Esse Quam Videri (to be, rather than to seem), North Carolina’s state motto, might as well be the rallying cry of Internet democracy. The Kennedy-Nixon debate marked the growing importance of image in American politics. It mattered that Nixon wasn’t wearing makeup, and candidates now rely on media consultants. Consequently, many Americans see politicians as a collection of sound bites and glossy imagery. The Internet’s promise is that we can turn this tide by engaging with candidates in unfiltered and direct conversation.

The Web on the Candidates

Over at Hotline's On the Download, Shira Toeplitz has a detailed list of how much the candidates are spending online -- both for their web teams and for their sites -- and who they're paying, compiling the first-quarter FEC reports and getting the lowdown herself on who's working where. Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton are the biggest spenders, paying $412,000 and $202,000 respectively for their web sites in the first quarter. Dennis Kucinich spent the largest percentage of his budget on his web site, and Chris Dodd and Barack Obama get the most bang for their buck. "Both had Senate Web sites off which they could build, but presentation and features are certainly above par for their price tag." And what's worse, Duncan Hunter and Tommy Thompson having no online staffers at all, or Tom Tancredo paying his one staff member $600?

With news that Rudy Giuliani is planning to "offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days," various interest groups have been voicing opposition to his candidacy, perhaps none as vehemently as the New York ferret lobby, which produced this vicious attack ad called "Ferrets for Freedom" that protests Giuliani's ban on ferrets in New York City in 1999. "People have killed more people than ferrets, so they should ban people, not ferrets," exclaims one outraged ferret. (Hat tip to AirCongress and PrezVid)