Six Degrees of Voting

An anonymous reader writes "Received a link to SixDegreesOfVoting.com that is a new take on the Registration drive concept. From the Manifesto: 'if we make sure everyone we know is voting, and they make sure everyone they know is voting, and so on, wouldn't everyone be voting?' Match it with a nice flash map showing linked signups, it looks pretty cool (albeit leaning solidly to the left right now)."

Re:Oh great...

[moofdaddy]

I thought we were in a democracy not a republic. I would hold that anything that gets people interested in politics would be good.

No, we're in a republic. If we were in a democracy the electorate would vote directly for issues (tax cuts, raises, laws, etc). Instead, we vote for a series of people who make those decisions for us.

from a co-founder of the site

[Anonymous Coward]

The importance of this election makes it necessary to share opinions in meaningful debate, and get others around you excited and educated.

The site is a web of users that works on referrals at the user's discretion. Let's see how far it could go and if it will impact this election in a meaningful way. Never before has something like this been attempted in a political sense.

Use this link to sign up under the root of slashdot community:

http://www.sixdegreesofvoting.com/?ref=296&mac=1c9 7ed8d1c7b35eb3b3682974c5632e5 [sixdegreesofvoting.com]

Re:One good point...

[Blacklantern]

Ah but, the more people who plant to vote, the more people are likely to take interest in the upcoming elections. Take this article for example [reuters.com] it shows that tv ratings for the first debate are up 26%. At the same time new voter registration applications are swamping county/state election workers [usatoday.com]

Re:Oh great...

[Krow10]

I thought we were in a democracy not a republic. I would hold that anything that gets people interested in politics would be good.

No, we're in a republic. If we were in a democracy the electorate would vote directly for issues (tax cuts, raises, laws, etc). Instead, we vote for a series of people who make those decisions for us.

The terms "democracy" and "republic" are not mutually exclusive. In the U.S., we are a constitutional democracy [state.gov] and are accurately described by both the terms "democracy" and "republic." The phrase "direct democracy" refers to the form of government where citizens vote directly on issues, and the U.S. is not a direct democracy. But a representative democracy it is still a democracy and it is incorrect to say either that the U.S. is not a democracy or that the U.S. is not a republic.

Cheers,
Craig