Online fundraising and geekery in political campaigns. In KANSAS?

[matgb]

Normally when I think of Kansas politics I think of things like evolution being banned in schools or those silly stickers they tried, but this is a refreshing change; an interesting and innovative use of the internet by a USian running for the Kansas state legislature and raising funds through an XKCD style webcomic. It's attracting reasonable coverage in the US media, including a fairly favourable write up in the LA Times, and he's getting record numbers of donations.

full comic / larger version

The nature of US politics makes it very different to directly translate fundraising techniques to the UK, even if it's appropriate, our focus on parties within a multi-party polity is very different to their focus on individuals within a two-party system (even if in most districts we have an effective two-party system anyway, gotta love Duverger), but this sort of thing is certainly going to appeal to the sort of demographic that should be voting Lib Dem anyway—wonder if anyone could come up with a more generalised UK version with a similar sort of message?

Comments

[baseballchica03.livejournal.com]

Haha, I posted a link to this last week because it made me laugh so hard. It's funny because it's SO incredibly reflective of how the system works over here.

I think whether you're voting for a party or a candidate the principle would be the same. Howard Dean is really the one who kick started the idea over here of small donations over the internet rather than $5,000 per plate dinners from large donors just raking in the cash. Because you might not be able to afford to give a lot, even $25, what with gas climbing and no public transport to speak of. But $10 might be doable. So, you know, start up a "donate $20.08 to the LibDems" movement. Well, $20.08 is a lot more in pounds than dollars, but you get the idea. Pick a number that seems like it'll resonate with people for whatever reason, and the principle should be the same.

[tyrell.livejournal.com]

That is very, very good.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I went to a talk a few months ago aobut Ron Paul, a supposed libertarian candiate for the US presidency.

Unfortunately, the talk - which was meant to be about the netroots campaign and how the campaigners utilised the internet and social networking to gather (erm...) unstoppable momentum - focussed very much on the man and his politics.

The impact of the net on politics interested me a lot; the uncritical acclaim for Paul's politics didn't.

I think the internet can be a powerful politcal tool (a recent article in the Economist demonstrated how this could be for good or bad, with extreme right wing groups using Facebook-like websites to rally their forces - described by the Economist as "Hatebook").

But it also allows the rise of single topic campaigns and people working outside the party system. This could be interesting going forward!

[baseballchica03.livejournal.com]

I wrote a paper about this subject for a grad class about technology and how it's changing the shape of communities - although it was before "netroots" came into fashion, and I called it "grassweb campaigning". There's some interesting research being done on the subject by a group of people at Bentley College.

I'll be damned if I can find the link to the data and stuff, but here's the woman in charge of the project. http://www.bentley.edu/academics-research/faculty_research/faculty_database/faculty_detail.cfm?id=2889

[misscoollinda.livejournal.com]

I tend to think the same thing about Kansas, so thanks for the new info!

[smattie.livejournal.com]

Living in Kansas myself, I've found a lot of the politics here is really based on bible teachings. I'm from the Northeast originally so to move to a state that is heavily religious was quite a change for me. I've never met a Mormon until I moved out here to the Midwest. However I digress.

Evolution being banned in schools here, I think we're the only state that has that. What people don't realize is they wanted to teach creationism here, which is banned by law due to the separation of Church and State. Now it's something to do with the search of intelligent design, whatever that means.

Where I live, Johnson County, the school district my daughter goes to has barred teachers from correcting papers with red pens because it's seen as too aggressive of a color. Mind you this was voted upon and passed.

Most forms of gambling is illegal in this state, however if I just go 5 miles east to Missouri I can gamble my heart out. Though their laws about casinos are strange, they MUST be built on water (I'm not making this up.) and the water has to be at least a certain depth to be legal or risk shutting down.

I could go on about the laws in the state I live in. Kansas politics and it's politicians are heavily seeded in the 'Red State' mentality.