The Online Party of Canada is a new federal political party that wants to harness the power of the internet for politics.
Michael Nicula of Toronto is the party founder. You can read an interview with him here.
The jist of the party is that it would be the extreme end of representation of the will of the people. All OPC representatives would vote as the majority public opinion tells them should vote. The positions of the party are decided by online voting. The voting on most issues is topping out at 25 people. The gap between the desire of the founder and the reality of being a political party are huge.
Given that the party is call the Online Party of Canada, one would expect the website to be of better quality. The Facebook page is ok, but nothing brilliant. Their Twitter feed reads like a one way communication, there is no sense of a dialog going on. Actually it is not even a dialog but a series of announcements. The Youtube videos on the party's channel are not well done.
What Michael seems to want to do with a political party, Susan Einarsson wants to do with lobbying of government. The two of them should team up.
I will watch some more and see what comes of this. Given that an election could coming soon, the Online Party of Canada needs to find more than $300K just to be able to run a full slate of candidates in the election. In Canada, unless you are a separatist, any serious party has to field a full slate in an election.
At this time the party looks like a part time hobby of a single person.
2 comments:
I think they have a unique idea, but the biggest issue I have with them is that they reduce complex policy discussions to dichotomous yes/no votes on their website.
I also can't get to their website right now, which is quite the Fail.
Thanks for the link to my interview! I also did one with Susan Einarsson, if you're interested :)
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