Changing Politics is Hard

Micha Sifry was the eCampaign manager for Andrew Rasiej bid to become the number two man in New York politics: Public Advocate. They run an open source political campaign:

We had three over-arching goals for this campaign:
1) that we could push into the public debate some big new ideas about reinventing municipal government, fostering civic engagement, and the value of getting everyone an affordable highspeed Internet connection;
2) that the right way to run for office is to be as open, transparent, people-centered, small-donor-based and network-driven as possible (building on the experiences of various 2004 campaigns); and
3) that reform-minded individuals, groups, writers, editorialists, bloggers, and institutions, along with locally-focused civic activists, would find all of this refreshing and inspiring and they would rally to our banner and help amplify our message.

This is where the potential of new technology lies and where also some of my hopes for positive change are rooted. Unfortunately they didn't manifest this time and Micha Sifry has an excellent post mortem sharing his perspective.

* Tech “community” a fiction?
...
But the fabled tech community turned out to be mostly a fable when it came to actually embracing Andrew’s campaign and setting aside time to spread its message. Yes, about 100 local and national bloggers linked to the campaign. But few made an extended commitment to pitch in. To give one telling example, when I asked a core group of about 30 tech supporters to help us “kick the tires” on our WeFixNYC.com site by sending in a picture of a pothole before we announced the project to the public, at most 3 or 4 responded.

This is where we techies have to wake up, pay more attention. Politics matter and we should do our little part so that the great potential that our new tools offer (See: Extreme Democracy) come to fruition. It is possible, but as this example shows a lot harder than we think.  (The comments are worth reading too)

Comments

[Phil Wolff]

Hi, Mark. This is a classic case of confusing medium with message. A community is more complicated than just a list of phone numbers (or email addresses or what have you). It is, among other things, groups of people who share goals, values, and emotional connections with each other, who identify and have rapport with their institutions and their contacts. You usually need socialization processes (rites of passage); positive reinforcement (making it hard for people to make mistakes); identifiable people wearing hats for leadership, nurturing, educating, etc.,; and clear signaling of what is important.

One political action not resolving (the photo campaign) does not mean a failure of community. It suggests that this call to action was poorly crafted in that, while aligned with the communication strategy of the campaign, it did not connect strongly enough at that moment with those volunteers.

Then again, a 10% response rate is outstanding! National campaigns sometimes benefit from very large numbers; .001% of millions still produce squads of active volunteers for every rally or project. It is much different in small campaigns where you fight hard for every volunteer's heart and mind and time. Micha didn't ask enough people (at a 10% conversion rate) to get the 10 volunteers he wanted. Was the pool too small? not yet engaged to the point of leaving their computers? Did he need to ask each person personally vs. sending the request to a list? First responders know not to say "Hey somebody, call 911"; they're taught to point to someone in the crowd and say "You! Call 911! Now!".

[Mark Finnern]

Hi Phil, You are right, 10% is a high responds rate, so may be we techies are doing our part. Still it was not enough to energize the people behind open, transparent, grassroots politics. I guess it is my naiveté that hoped these things alone would carry more weight. It looked to me as if they did an honest campaign using these tools, and the result was 5%. Therefore to change politics is harder than I thought, Mark.