eDemocracy International - International E-Democracy
EDEM-ELECT has been established to promote citizen exchange efforts during the election season.
EDEM-ELECT intends to bring together those working to facilitate online public discussion and participation in elections held in 1996 or 1997. Depending upon the usefullness of this forum its charter may be expanded or reduced.
For now EDEM-ELECT is focused on the exchange of ideas, plans, and experiences among individuals and groups working across the world to develop local, regional, or national efforts.
In particular we want to encourage discussions on how to build and maintain geographically focused online citizen participation forums. Noting the strong concentration of activity by national media and commercial organizations, the U.S. Presidental race will not be a primary focus.
Instead we want to concentrate on the 'how to's' of organizing local, non-partisan efforts; such as how to recruit volunteers, how to attract and use in-kind information infrastructure donations (WWW site, e-mail lists, etc.), how to build an audience, how to work with campaigns, the media and political organizations, and how to coordinate the technical and social/political aspects of online open forums.
Although our focus is on the pracitical implementation of
citizen-based efforts we encourage the participation of the
academic, media, commercial, and government sectors. We
believe new forms of public/private partnership need to be
explored and developed in order to realize the democratic
potential of new information technology and networks.
It must be noted, however, this list is not for abstract
discourse on the virtues and/or vices of representative and/or
direct democracy. These discussions already occur on the PPP-LIST
and the EL-DEMOCRACY
e-mail forums. We encourage you to subscribe to those forums as well.
EDEM-ELECT is, rather, a place designed to help bring together
people willing to roll up their sleeves and do some work.
An archive of previous posting is available. This is great way to get caught up on topics of discussion.
Special thanks to the Minneapolis Telecommunications Network for provision of e-mail list facilities.
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