The Wisdom of Crowds Meets Politics

Wired tells us that:

10 Questions is soliciting video questions on four of the most popular video-sharing sites and placing them in a Digg-like tool that lets the public vote them up or down. Ultimately the 10 highest-ranking videos will be submitted unedited to each of the presidential candidates, who can then produce a video response.

The goal is to move beyond having the media act as filters:

In the CNN-YouTube debate in July, it was CNN producers who chose the online-video questions to present to candidates. Similarly, in the ongoing MySpace and MTV forums, journalists serve as filters between voters and candidates. TechPresident’s goal is to provide U.S. voters the leading role in controlling the much-touted national dialogue with the presidential candidates.

Of course, the choice to vote a question up or down is an expression of a set of preferences, interests, valences, etc. Sounds like a nice opportunity for some enterprising grad student to ask 10 Questions to give them access to the choice data underlying the final rankings.

Hat tip to Dan Smith of our department here at UGA.