Democracy - there's an app for that?

A new smartphone application promises to bring petition signature gathering into the 21st century. But it is a good idea?

I saw a tweet yesterday from Joe Trippi, the former manager of Howard Dean's 2004 campaign that revolutionized how political campaigns engage people online. He linked to an article about the launch of a smartphone application that will be primarily used in California, to electronically gather signatures to get iniatives on the ballot. The idea is that you can "sign" the petition using your finger as a pen on the screen of your iPhone.

However, the company, Verafirma, touts that this tool could revolutionize the way citizens participate in elections - and maybe even how they vote.

There's no question that campaigns need to innovate and adapt their tactics to a changing world where many people have no landlines and spend hours a day engaging the world through their mobile device. But does electronic signature gatherin take organizers out of the equation? And what does this mean for the digital divide -- if you are gathering signatures primarily via smartphone, who is being left out of the process?

We're interested in your thoughts on this. Is this a sign that the coming decade will signal major shifts in our tactics to engage voters? Or is this just one application addressing a piece of a specific need?

Let us know in the comments.

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Cool but...

Submitted by Bob Luttman (not verified) on January 8, 2010 - 8:05pm.

Nice. We need a great organizing app:

- Voter lists
- generate canvass lists
- data collection etc for canvassing
- precinct maps
- Street maps
- elected official/bureaucrat names and numbers
- political info/data

I don't do many petitions, but I doorknock/phone canvass/organize

I agree with Bob's comment and...

Submitted by Todd Smyth (not verified) on February 10, 2010 - 7:49am.

We also need to better connect our candidates and elected officials to their top supporters and smart phone apps could help with this. If a candidate were to get a petition that carried with it photos of their top supporters that would have a much bigger impact than a list of names.

I think most activists would be shocked to find out how few names of volunteers politicians know. We can help change this by first collecting photos of our top volunteers and loading them into a Picasa album with names as captions. Eventually tying this to data in a smart phone app and pressing for candidate recognition for top door knockers and phone bankers will lead to a better connection between elected officials and their supporters. If you tie that to a photo petition of those same supporters, it would have a much bigger impact.