Albemarle Supervisor David Slutzky is launching an online referendum system to regularly poll his constituents, Brian Wheeler writes at Charlottesville Tomorrow. At a website he calls Talk to Your Government he will accept mass feedback — votes, presumably — from registered voters that are within the Rio District in order to get a sense of what his constituents want.
Given that online polls are notoriously useless, I’m not sure that this will tell him much about the will of the voters, but it’s an interesting idea.
All forms of feedback are problematic, but I can’t imagine anything but good results from the effort regardless of how “notoriously useless” it seems. If a particular poll encourages people to talk about issues with neighbors and friends we should be glad that for even a moment issues garnered more attention than a TV sitcom. If the poll suffers from selection bias then we can take some comfort that it is a better bias than a chance in-person handshake and discussion.
Vox populi via the webb. I don’t think you can say it is a true voice. If anything the vast middle will not be represented.
It will be the home of the hyper aware- I am looking at you Cvillenews readers!;)
Waldo… off-topic but did you hear the great news? It’s now official Greene County is getting a Super Wal Mart! I am sure you are thrilled :-) I say it’s only a matter of time before Madison starts replicating Greene County.