Electoral democracy in the last few centuries was primarily intended to empower the individual voter so that they could select a legislator from their midst to represent their interests in far away assemblies. At a time when an early Oregon settler would be facing a bumpy ride of over a month to arrive at Washington, D.C.\u2019s Congress, there was no other practical way but to provide a vote for a representative who claimed to best champion your own agenda and then see them again four years later when it came time for re-election. The internet has turned this entire model on its head as it has created a channel whereby any voter can directly and easily be engaged in every aspect of their government, as was most evidently shown by President Obama\u2019s recent \u201csurprise\u201d visit to Reddit, which overloaded its servers and made the site unavailable to millions of users who wanted in.<\/p>\n
Not everyone was shut out by server incapacity, as the President\u2019s half hour session was one of the most highly attended events in the history of the internet. The first page of the Obama Q&A drew nearly four million page views and comments in the range of 25,000. In the half hour the President was only able to address ten questions, but the entire experience was one that the majority of attendees rated as positive.<\/p>\n
You can get real time status updates from your cousin in Singapore, your colleague in Munich and your friend in Buenos Aires, but when it comes to your political representatives you\u2019re faced with a wholly insufficient binary yes\/no at leap year intervals. President Obama\u2019s Reddit experience showed that the political class is slowly but surely realizing that the age of the hanging chad is over and that today\u2019s social media citizens demand more direct and hands-on interaction with their government at every level.<\/p>\n