Santorum Google screenshot

When you Google for "Santorum," this is the top search result. (Click to enlarge - but only if you're not too squeamish.) You can help keep this brilliant effort working.

It’s time to use my power for good.

Yesterday NPR reported on how the batshit crazy social conservative former US senator Rick Santorum is pulling ahead in Republican polls for the presidential race.

Santorum has always annoyed and amused me. But with this, he’s officially scaring me.

Today, Marketplace Tech Report reminded me about Rick Santorum’s Google problem — so I decided to take action.

So here I am linking to SpreadingSantorum.com, a Google bombing page that writer Dan Savage set up in 2003.

Furthermore I encourage everyone else to do likewise.  Especially if you’ve had your own web site or blog under its own domain name for several years. But even if your only online presence is via a third-party service like Facebook, WordPress.com, or Tumblr (where you don’t have your own domain), I still encourage you to post a link to SpreadingSantorum.com.

Talk about a long-term investment in search visibility that is REALLY paying off! Here’s how it works…

When a website or page has been on the web and attracting links for several years, Google promotes it in search results so it ends up near or at the top of the first results page for relevant Google searches. This ultimately raises the destination site’s Google PageRank — especially when it’s linked to by sites with PageRank that exceed its own.

So far, SpreadingSantorum.com has a PageRank of 5 — but it’s already showing up at the top of Google searches for the term Santorum. (See screenshot at the top of this post.)

My site, Contentious.com, has been online and publishing fairly continuously since 1997. I currently have a PageRank of 6 (out of a possible 10 points). Not to be self-congratulatory, but that’s pretty good for a blog run by one person. That’s the power of a site being online under the same domain for nearly 15 years.

This also means that when I link to other sites with a lower PageRank, my inbound link helps their search visibility in Google. Right now, SpreadingSantorum.com has a PageRank of 5. So in fact, my inbound link helps this site maintain its search visibility.

Why link to SpreadingSantorum.com now? 

Now that Santorum is pulling ahead (however moderately) in Republican polls, it’s likely that Republicans and social conservatives — who have a pretty good track record for unified action — will try to undermine SpreadingSantorum.com‘s search visibility by linking like crazy to the official Santorum campaign site. (Yes, I am deliberately NOT linking to that site here.)

Also, mainstream news sites, political bloggers, and others are especially likely to link more often to the official Santorum campaign site, now that his viability as a candidate is increasing. (I’m gonna go wash my hands, now that I’ve typed that sentence, ick…)

All of this means that this brilliant social/political/search hack is currently under threat and needs your support. So link now, and keep linking! The more links on more days from more sites, the better!

What kind of power do your links wield?

Here’s how to check PageRank for your site or any site:

• Google Chrome users: I use this Chrome Pagerank addon. It displays the PageRank of any page displayed in my browser.
• Google toolbar users: If you use Internet Explorer or Firefox, here’s how to view PageRank in the toolbar. (Install Google toolbar)
• Safari users: There’s a Safari PageRank addon.
• Everyone else: You can check PageRank by pasting the URL for any site or page at CheckPageRank.net.

GO FORTH AND LINK TO SPREADINGSANTORUM.COM! And do your part to undermine an increasingly powerful politician who denies evolution (and thinks scientists are amoral), wants to eliminate birth control and opposes abortion rights (thus indicating he thinks women’s most important role is as an ambulatory incubator for male sperm), and who has compared homosexual sex to bestiality and child rape.

Yeah. Really. No kidding. Batshit crazy has no business in government — especially in the White House.

I realize this perspective flies in the face of reality, but I have a dream… of sanity…

I wrote two posts for the Knight Digital Media Center at USC explaining how news organizations can use this information to create more effective ways to engage and grow the audiences for their political coverage — and why they shouldn’t wait for the next election season to do this:

• Jan. 26, 2011: Social media should be part of your political news strategy, Pew research indicates
• Dec. 28, 2010: Political/election news should go mobile, Pew research indicates

Here’s what one of these tools can create:

cloud1

More about what Windy Citizen is doing on this front…

Blagojevitter: This page tracks, in real time, Twitter updates that include the terms blagojevich or fitzgerald. This page is a widget from Monittor, a free service that offers a fairly slick interface for custom Twitter tracking. Monittor widgets are slightly more complex to configure and install than ordinary widgets, but it’s not rocket science. (I actually hadn’t known about Monittor, so kudos to the WindyCitizen for putting it on my radar.)

Windy Citizen editor Brad Flora selects particularly important or interesting items from this widget to retweet via the WindyCitizen Twitter account. (Example from this morning.)

Blagojevich complaint word cloud: The graphic above was created with Wordle, a visualization tool that analyzes text and turns it into art. Here, the source text was the 78-page official complaint against the Illinois governor. In a word cloud, the biggest words appear most frequently in the source text. Even though word cloud images are static (not interactive, which is why I didn’t mention Wordle in my interactive visual tools session last week) this approach can provide insight into a document — even on a subconscious level. Plus, it’s attractive, intriguing, and fun.

…And, of course, Windy Citizen set up a Blagojevich blog.

Which other sites or services are using online media creatively to present news and commentary about this controversy? Please provide links and info in the comments below.

(NOTE: I originally published this on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits blog.)

They’re updating stats on the site as those races get called. It’s getting interesting. Check it out.

map

UPDATE NOV 4. The names of the 12 busted streakers have been published, so I’m following up on this case via local courts…

On Halloween, as I wrote earlier, I went down to Boulder, CO’s Pearl St. pedestrian mall to check out the costumes — which are always spectacular — and to see the annual Naked Pumpkin Run. (Note: that link above goes to my blog post which includes a video containing nudity.) This loosely organized event has a lot of local fans.

The Naked Pumpkin Run is nothing more than that — sometime around 9-10 pm on Halloween, a bunch of people get naked, put jack-o-lanterns on their heads, and run en masse down the Pearl St. Mall. It’s not sexual, violent, dangerous, or threatening. It’s just silly. It’s unique. It’s fun. It’s exuberant. It’s positive and life-affirming.

And: It’s illegal.

Unlike in previous years, the Boulder police were out in force for this event, where they ticketed several runners for indecent exposure. Consequently, several fun-loving local folks may end up suffering life-altering public stigma as registered sex offenders.

No kidding.

The Colorado Daily posted this video of the event, including some footage of the busts:

Need some irony? All this happened less than 24 hours after two remarkably violent assaults, which occurred just a half-mile from the scene of the Naked Pumpkin Run busts.

Here are the details, as best as I’ve been able to gather them so far…

This was my first time at the Naked Pumpkin Run. (I was just watching, not running.) Attendees from prior years told me that so far the Boulder cops had always refrained from doing anything more than crowd management at this event.

But this year, I witnessed somewhere around 12-15 cops detaining and ticketing runners. (It was pretty dark and mobbed, with folks moving around, so I couldn’t get an exact count. But I’m confident with that ballpark figure.)

Yesterday our local paper confirmed that “12 runners were cited for indecent exposure.” I expect that on Monday the Boulder police blotter may offer more info (although the online version of this blotter is generally a summary of incidents, not details or names).

EXTREME LEGAL CONSEQUENCES

These citations could be much more than just a bummer to the folks involved. Under Colorado state law (18-7-302) indecent exposure is a class 1 misdemeanor. But: If these citations are upheld by a judge, the people involved probably would be required to register with the Colorado sex offender registry.

According to CO statute 16-22-103 (5), judges do have leeway to exempt people convicted of indecent exposure from required sex offender registration — but only for minors, which is not the case with the Naked Pumpkin Run. At least, that’s my reading of the statute, tell me what you think:

“(5) (a) Notwithstanding any provision of this article to the contrary, if, pursuant to a motion filed by a person described in this subsection (5) or on its own motion, a court determines that the registration requirement specified in this section would be unfairly punitive and that exempting the person from the registration requirement would not pose a significant risk to the community, the court, upon consideration of the totality of the circumstances, may exempt the person from the registration requirements imposed pursuant to this section if:

“(I) The person was younger than eighteen years of age at the time of the commission of the offense; and

“(II) The person has not been previously charged with unlawful sexual behavior; and

“(III) The offense, as charged in the first petition filed with the court, is a first offense of either misdemeanor unlawful sexual contact, as described in section 18-3-404, C.R.S., or indecent exposure, as described in section 18-7-302, C.R.S.; and… [procedural requirements follow...]“

…Seems to me that those “ands” confine permitted exemptions to minors.

Yes, those charges could (and probably will be) plea bargained down. But still: It looks like that in this case, for the sake of posturing, the Boulder police department was willing to seriously mess with people’s lives. The cops on the scene apparently were directed to issue citations for indecent exposure — not creating a public nuisance or some other charge with less dire consequences.

This consequence seems unnecessarily putative to me. I mean, hundreds (if not more than a thousand) people were gathered on the Pearl St. Mall specifically to celebrate this event. I saw very, very few minors present, all of whom appeared to be accompanied by their parents. Yes, some people were drunk and/or rowdy, and I’m glad that cops were on hand to manage those cases — which they did, capably and professionally. But by and large, the mood of this gathering was jubilant, fun, and friendly. As a woman wandering about the crowd mostly independently, I never felt the least bit endangered, threatened, or scared there.

Believe me: the annual New Year’s Day Mummers Parade in Philadelphia (which I’ve attended several times) is a vastly more menacing and risky crowd scene — often involving many incidents of public nudity that are intended to demean, embarrass, or intimidate innocent bystanders. (Now, THAT could reasonably be considered “indecent exposure.”)

In Boulder, rarely do you see more than 3-4 cops together at a time. Therefore: 12-15 Boulder cops in one place, detaining and ticketing people at nearly 11 pm for nonsexual, nonviolent nudity which the surrounding crowd was enthusiastically cheering (I saw NO ONE who appeared surprised or offended — and I was looking for that!) appears conspicuously disproportionate.

NEARBY, SAME DAY: GANG RAPE AND RACIAL BEATING

As if that’s not enough, there’s the larger context: Didn’t the cops have more important stuff to do that day than bust streakers?

Indeed they did.

Less than 24 hours before the Naked Pumpkin Run, at 12:45 am on Halloween — and just a few blocks away — a 20-year-old woman was gang-raped. Yep, right here in Boulder: gang-raped on the street. Two assailants held her down, while the other two raped her. Just about a half mile away from the scene of the Naked Pumpkin busts!

But wait, there’s more! Also at about the same time as the rape, just over a half mile to the west (and also just over a half mile from the courthouse on the mall), another violent assault occurred — this time, a racially motivated beating. According to the Boulder police:

“A 22-year-old male victim reported that he was assaulted by an unknown suspect who used ethnic slurs. The victim, who is Asian-American, told investigators he was walking down the street with some friends, singing a song from the movie Team America. The victim and his friends were confronted by a group of four men. One of the suspects came up to the victim and began challenging him.

“According to the victim and witnesses, the suspect said something to the effect of, ‘Do you think you are an American?’ and called the victim a ‘Chinaman.’ He punched the victim in the face multiple times. Initial reports were that the suspect pulled a knife, but subsequent interviews lead investigators to believe that the suspect may have referenced a knife but did not show one.”

This map shows how close all these incidents — which occurred on the same day — really are.

View Larger Map

OK, let’s assume the Boulder police department is investigating these violent crimes (including the crime scenes) thoroughly and professionally — and that the Naked Pumpkin busts Halloween night did not draw away any resources from those investigations, or from other normally required local law enforcement activities at that time. So what?…

CONTEXT MATTERS, FOR LOCAL POLICE AND NEWS OUTLETS

Given this context, the key question becomes: Why — when several violent criminals, including a gang of rapists — are on the loose, would Boulder police chief Mark Beckner make a deliberate choice to issue potentially serious and life-altering citations to nonviolent streakers at an annual (although unofficial) celebratory event?

Here’s what Beckner told the Daily Camera about this enforcement decision:

“‘We wanted to do something before (the event) got out of hand,’ said Police Chief Mark Beckner. ‘This was a good opportunity to enforce the law.’

“In past years, police haven’t had the staffing levels to ticket the runners, Beckner said, but this year the Halloween run fell on a Friday when a lot of officers were scheduled to work. Beckner likened streaking to speeding — police can’t catch them all, but they do what they can.”

There’s reason to question Beckner’s claim that “In past years, police haven’t had the staffing levels to ticket the runners.” The Naked Pumpkin Run started in 1998. In its 2007 annual report, the Boulder’s police department reported that it employs 171 officers. The department’s 2006 report and most other annual reports do not quantify the number of Boulder cops. But the 2005 report does mention, “During 2005, the Boulder Police Department was as close to fully staffed as it has been in several years.”

So far, the Camera’s staff coverage of the Naked Pumpkin Run (Oct. 27, Oct. 31 morning and late night, and Nov. 1) has neglected to note that these citations can result in mandatory inclusion in the CO sex offender registry. Same for coverage by the Denver Post and all other local mainstream media I could find. (If you have seen coverage that does mention this potential consequence, please comment below with links or cites.)

However, several comments on those stories have noted this consequence, as have some Camera letters to the editor blog posts. (See the Nov. 2 Letter to the Editor post titled “Overreacting to juvenile streaking,” and this letter from Les Halbek.)

However, local blogger David Thielen did interview chief Beckner before the Naked Pumpkin Run about the Boulder police’s apparently selective strategy on enforcing streaking laws. An excerpt:

“[Chief Beckner and I discussed] the specifics of [Boulder's June 2008] naked bicycle ride, tonight’s Naked Pumpkin Run, and students streaking. [Beckner said that police] did not arrest any of the naked bicycle riders because ‘there were too many.’ At the Pumpkin Run tonight he said if it was just 1 or 2 [runners], then they probably would be arrested. If there were lots then he said it depended on the situation but was not willing to say anyone would be arrested if it was a large group.

“So here’s where it gets interesting. I asked what would happen if 40 or 50 students streaked the football game. And his reply was they would probably only be able to catch and arrest 5 or 6 of them. When I asked why in that case they would arrest 5 or 6 but did not do so for the naked bicycle ride and probably would not for the Naked Pumpkin Run — he said ‘Because they are different.’ Yet when I pressed him for what was different, he was not able to give me anything specific.

“Here’s my theory — the only difference is that in one case it’s students and in the other it’s adults. It’s a double standard, it may even be subconscious. But unless Chief Beckner can give us a clear credible explanation about how they are different and why that difference deserves the different approach, I think we should assume it’s discrimination.

“On a related note, I pointed out that the ‘crime’ of streaking carries with it the possibility of being labeled a sex offender. Yet the police view it as a crime to enforce as resources allow. I asked him if he could think of any other crime where you can be labeled a sex offender, yet the police view it as enforce it only if resources are available. He couldn’t think of any other.”

Pretty telling — and worthy of further examination, I think.

But apparently the Camera staff is aware of the potentially dire legal consequences of streaking in Boulder. This Oct. 25 Camera story on another recent Boulder streaking incident (at an Oct. 24 Boulder High School football game, involving the 17-year-old son of State House Majority Leader Alice Madden ) pointed out:

“The boy faces a class-one misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure, Boulder police Sgt. Pat Wyton said Saturday.

“The charge carries fines ranging from $500 to $5,000 and/or a sentence of six to 18 months in jail.

“Wyton said it’s also possible that a judge would order the teen to register as a sex offender, although that scenario is unlikely because a judge might view the stunt as less serious than other indecent exposure offenses.

“‘It’s a kid running across a field as a prank … I’m sure he’s going to get some kind of referral or restorative justice,’ Wyton said.

Irony, much? Yes, a minor could be exempted from the sex offender registry. But, according to state law, it looks like an adult probably cannot.

WHAT COMES NEXT, AND WHAT CAN YOU DO?

…I’m very sad that my town’s police department chose such an unfortunate time to crack down on a popular, festive, nonviolent, nonsexual longstanding annual event involving public nudity. Whether this decision was made because of that day’s earlier violent assaults, or despite them, I cannot say.

Clearly, chief Beckner’s own remarks indicate that making a point was the point here. The Naked Pumpkin Run citations were clearly not a matter of protecting public safety, as far as I can tell — and I was there. Rather, the point seems to have been to make the Boulder police look busy and tough.

If anything, the officers’ actions on the Pearl St. Mall Halloween night actually exacerbated public safety risks in that situation by inflaming the crowd — which grew quickly and circled closely around the cops and detainees, chanting “Let them go! Let them go!” Indeed, that was the only time that night when I feared violence or panic might erupt.

I’m not blaming the cops who issued the citations. They were doing what they were told, and they have no discretion about legal penalties. And, as far as I could see, they executed their duties professionally.

I hope the judges who consider the Naked Pumpkin Run citations decide to dismiss the charges. This appears to be the only option under current law that would keep the Halloween streakers out of the sex offender registry. Furthermore, Boulder’s law enforcement strategic decision was, I think, irresponsible and cynically motivated. I intend to attend these hearings if I can, to report on what happens. I hope other local bloggers, citizens, and news organizations will do the same.

Of course, dismissing charges against these defendants doesn’t really solve the problem.

This is why I think Colorado residents should petition our state legislators to change Colorado’s sex offender registry law. Our judges should be able to exempt people of any age who are cited for indecent exposure from having to be registered as sex offenders. Also, we might want to lower the minimum fine for indecent exposure in CO to something that would be reasonable in situations like the Naked Pumpkin Run. $500 is pretty steep in that context. The authorities would still have discretion to find up to $5000, the current maximum.

Here’s who to contact in the Colorado legislature:

• HOUSE: Currently, Boulder County’s state representative is Alice Madden (303-866-2348, alice.madden.house@state.co.us. Yes, that’s the very same Alice Madden whose 17-year son was busted earlier this month for streaking at a Boulder High School football game — and since he’s a minor, he could be exempted from the sex offender registry even if convicted. But her term limit is up, so after the Nov. 8 election Madden will be replaced by either Republican Dorothy Marshall, or Democrat Dickey Lee Hullinghorst. Stay tuned, and contact Madden’s successor once she is in office.
• SENATE: Boulder’s state senator (District 16) is Democrat Dick Gibbs (303-866-4873, dan.gibbs.senate@state.co.us. He’s running for re-election against Republican Don Ytterberg. Again, after the Nov. 8 election would be the time to contact our state senator about modifying these laws.

Finally, let’s hope the Boulder police catch the perpetrators of those truly heinous violent Halloween crimes. And let’s hope the victims recover well. And let’s hope that others don’t suffer at the hands of those criminals in the meantime.

What do you think of the Naked Pumpkin Run busts, and their possible legal consequences? Please comment below.

This series is a work in process. I’m counting on Contentious.com readers and others to help me sharpen this discussion so I can present it more formally for the Knight Commission to consider.

So please comment below or e-mail me to share your thoughts and questions. Thanks!

To compensate for our government’s human-unfriendly info systems, some people have developed civic info-filtering backup systems: news organizations, activists, advocacy groups, think tanks, etc.

In my opinion, ordinary Americans have come to rely too heavily on these third parties to function as our “democracy radar.” We’ve largely shifted to their shoulders most responsibility to clue us in when something is brewing in government, tell us how we can exercise influence (if at all), and gauge the results of civic and government action.

Taken together, these backup systems generally have worked well enough — but they also have significant (and occasional dangerous) flaws. They’ve got too many blind spots, too many hidden agendas, insufficient transparency, and too little support for timely, effective citizen participation…

In other words, the patchwork network of backup systems often fail to supply enough civic information to precisely those people who are most likely to be involved or affected by civic issues, in ways that engage them and support participation. Also, often the civic info they offer generally reflects the providers’ own agendas, assumptions, habits, and preferences — about which they may or may not be conscious or transparent.

Yes, having these backup civic info systems is certainly better than relying solely on the government’s own information systems — but too often, not by much. And sometimes they can even be much worse.

JUST GIVE ME THE DATA

The Knight Foundation has been supporting some efforts to make civic and public info more user-friendly and direct, like Adrian Holovaty’s Everyblock project. This is another third-party civic info “backup system” that aims to provide a more direct experience of civic info. They try (and mostly succeed) to improve upon government communications by enhancing relevance and usability. Everyblock empowers users to search and filter civic info as they choose (at least within a geographic context).

…But there’s a big catch to offering this valuable service: Everyblock must cope with the fact that usually getting raw civic info from government and public sources is a huge pain. It requiring considerable tweaking and maintenance to constantly adapt their “screen scraping” processes.

Screen scraping is a painstaking, cumbersome programming technique. A screen scraper program extracts data from the final display output of another program (what gets shown in, say, your web browser). According to Wikipedia: “The key element that distinguishes screen scraping from regular parsing is that the output being scraped was intended for final display to a human user, rather than as input to another program, and is therefore usually neither documented nor structured for convenient parsing.” That means the whole process is inherently pitfall-prone and inefficient.

Blogger and author Jon Udell nailed the underlying problem of data friction inherent in situations where civic media are forced to resort to screen scraping to obtain public information:

“Data friction can be intentional or not. When it’s intentional, you might have to file a FOIA request to get it. But in a lot of cases, it’s unintentional. The data is public, and intended to be widely seen and used, but isn’t readily reusable.

“…Now it’s time to grease the wheels. Here’s one way that can happen. An enlightened city government can decide to publish [its] data in a reusable way. I’ve written extensively about Washington DC’s groundbreaking DCStat program which does exactly that. I can’t wait to see what happens when EveryBlock goes to Washington.

“But city governments shouldn’t have to go out of their way to provide web-facing data services and feeds. Databases should natively support them. That’s the idea behind Astoria (ADO.NET Services), which is discussed in this interview with Pablo Castro. If the NYC Department of Health had that kind of access layer sitting on top of its [restaurant inspection] database, it wouldn’t put EveryBlock’s screen-scraper out of a job — it would just make that [person's] job a whole lot more interesting and effective.”

This all leads back to why I like what the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy is doing: They’re flipping the focus around, to put people’s needs first.

They’re doing this by starting from the question “What kind of information do communities need?” — rather than simply settling for “How can we tweak the badly designed, human-unfriendly entrenched patchwork system of civic information so that it becomes at least slightly less painful or more useful?”

…Well, they’re doing that to a point, anyway. The crucial limitation I see in their approach lies in how the Knight Commission has chosen to define “community.”

(COMING THURSDAY: Part 3, Beyond Geography…)

This series is a work in process. I’m counting on Contentious.com readers and others to help me sharpen this discussion so I can present it more formally for the Knight Commission to consider.

So please comment below or e-mail me to share your thoughts and questions. Thanks!

If you want to strengthen communities, it helps to ask: What defines a community, really? Is it mostly a matter of “where” (geography)?

Last week I got into an interesting discussion with some folks at the Knight Foundation and elsewhere about whether “local” is the only (or most important) defining characteristic of a community. This was sparked by an event held last week by the new Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy — an effort to recommend both public and private measures that would help US communities better meet their information needs.

From the time I first heard of this project, I thought it was an excellent idea. It bothers me deeply that many (perhaps most) Americans routinely “tune out” to issues of law, regulation, and government that not only affect them, but also that they can influence — at least to some extent. (I say this fully aware that I often fall into the “democratically tuned out” category on several fronts.)

The problem then becomes, of course, that when citizens don’t participate, their interests are easy to ignore or trample.

Why do so many Americans abdicate their power as citizens in a democracy? It seems to me that many are too quick to “blame the victim,” pointing to widespread apathy, ignorance, or a prevailing sense of helplessness as common democracy cop-outs.

I think there’s a different answer: The way our democracy attempts to engage citizens actively opposes human nature. That is, it just doesn’t mesh well with how human beings function cognitively or emotionally.

Fighting human nature is almost always a losing battle — especially if you want people to participate and cooperate….

Face it: It’s hard to stay motivated about participating in democracy when your attempts usually leave you feeling like you’ve been bashing your head against cloudy plexiglass, struggling to read documents written in Latin. In 5-point type. In bad lighting. With the pages lacking any discernible order or context. And you only have time to read a tiny fraction of them.

…I’m not kidding. As a journalist, I’ve covered energy and environmental policy at the federal, state, and local levels. So I’m intimately familiar with such civic info-inspired headaches. I’ve wrestled with obtuse legislative information systems. I’ve probably sacrificed years of my life to decoding cryptic legalese and bureaucratese, to learning the dialects and idiosyncratic processes of various governmental bodies, and to collating conflicting or seemingly unrelated information from disparate sources. I’ve sat through many, many mind-numbing public hearings and meetings. And I’ve interviewed public officials and employees who treat transparency primarily as a threat to their fiefdoms.

I expect would-be newcomers to the democratic political process (people who want to initiate ballot initiatives, or run for office) face even steeper learning and procedural hurdles.

My experience is why I suspect that apathy, ignorance, and helplessness are probably not root causes of US civic inaction. Rather, these inhibiting emotions are totally natural effects that occur when human beings repeatedly encounter overwhelming obstacles to participation.

As things currently stand, simply finding and staying informed about relevant issues brewing at all levels of government — as well as understanding the processes of, and forces at work in, a huge multilevel representative democracy — is damn hard work! I don’t expect it to be effortless, but it’s certainly much, much harder than it needs to be. Or should be. Or could be.

We could do much better by developing civic information systems that work with human nature — our abilities, our constraints, our preferences, how we relate to each other, and how our brains work.

In the rest of this series, I’ll sketch out some ways we might achieve this goal.

(NEXT: Part 2, Beyond Government…)

…Nothing so far in response from Obama. I’ll keep watching. But Hillary definitely has scored more humor points so far today.