OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

He had a really really good idea (even though Obama has already had the same idea) and got it on here early. In fact, it was one of the first ones on the entire site, only a few hours after it started. It's the first thing everyone sees now when they get on, so it gets more votes because it gets more publicity.

Maybe it also reveals how crowd-sourcing may be manipulated, if someone with lots of power is motivated. I'll bet the link to the website was sent around Capitol Hill to Republican offices, for staffers to click on the "promising" link.

Isn't that the point of this website? To encourage public support? You could have sent around a link for your ideas to all your friends.

Besides, there are only 178 Republican congressmen.. and currently 563 votes for the idea.. meaning 385 other people voted it up. Which still puts it in first even if the entire Republican party voted for it.

The point of the website is to brainstorm, but websites like this can be manipulated to support parochial interests. Yes, I could have sent the link to friends, but I'm not the head of the House Republican caucus, and I'm not the head of a powerful interest group like AARP or ACLU. Note that I said "staffers," not congressmen. Therefore, your math and inference breaks down. 500+ staffers could have voted for it. Given how quickly the idea got 500+ votes, that's the most likely explanation.

I am choosing to imagine that the people tasked with gathering the data from this excercise in online public engagement are smart and thoughtful enough to realize that some ideas were voted up through some mass emails to networks, and will delve deeply into more than just the top vote getters for useful information that they will use in moving forward to make our government more particpatory and open. This isn't a perfect system for unbiased input, I think that is a given, but if the data is analyzed with that in mind this experient can still offer something of value I hope.

I am not sure what has happened to bring up this subject but I can see the difficulty.

One person suggested that Congress needs to be involved in this 'discussion'. I agree, but i think it would be more honest if it were an 'upfront'and' transparent' involvement.

Unfortunatly, honesty and government are oxymoronic. And while everyone has the right to their opinion, flooding a website asking for 'public' opinion at the order of a govenment official makes this exercise 'moronic' and a waste of my time.

So, I would appreciate some transparency on the side of the 'people tasked with gathering the data'as to how they deal with spoilers.

This particular "idea" is astroturf because it comes from a politician who's hijacking a public forum for partisan purposes(if it is not partisan then where was this idea when he was in the majority and kept funding George Bush's senseless war in Iraq?[yes I know both parties are at fault for Iraq but it is Bush/Cheney's war and that's beside the point anyway]and why does the only porkbarrel project mentioned "happen" to be in a Democratic district?[now that's what I call trasparency!])and magically got it to #1 on the list. That's why it's astroturf(artificial grassroots) It's a lame attempt to make it appear as though it got to the top by Popular Demand. It should be removed from the site as the partisan astroturf sham it is and this forum given back to the people, which is what it was supposedly made for.