If ever a county could use gov2.0 to reinvigorate the politcial process it is Westchester, New York. I worked as a poll inspector yesterday and we got nineteen voters for a fifteen hour day. Quite often individuals came in oblivious to the fact that they couldn’t vote since they were registered as Republicans and only Democrats could vote. My point I am making here is that if the county government utilized the social media tools employed by the concept of gov2.0 they could increase awareness of the political process.
For the most part I think the politicos around here are content to keep the process this way. It’s a clubby group that perpetuates itself through social connections, patronage, and cronyism. The transparency that gov2.0 proposes would be a detriment to their built in advantages. The one candidate who has endorsed a vigorous social media policy, Dan Schorr for District Attorney is running as a Republican where they are clearly the outsiders in a heavily Democratic county. He recognizes that social media helps gives him a chance to break past their strangle hold on the election process.
Although Americans like to boast that we have the best democracy in the world, the apathy of the citizens begs to differ. Gov2.0 might help us break past this apathy.
Agreed. Plus I believe social media could be used to get the word out about the election. Surely there are more than 19 people interested in voting. But maybe they just didn’t remember, didn’t know where to vote, and all these little hurdles preventing them from moving forward.