Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard has been a regular over at BlueOregon.com since last July. His posts are here.

I'd venture to say that he's the most prolific and conversational blogger among all elected officials. He engages in discussions in the comments all the time, and even engages over at several other blogs in Oregon.

Well, as you noted, the $100 challenge is nothing new. But an 18-month, online-brewed campaign for Congress, that could be the start of a trend.

I have trouble finding out much about Scott on his site though... that picture on the right is not of him.

I do think we'll find that "who has a blog" will be secondary to "who is responsive" (blog or not). I have suggested some questions for publishers (and politicians, too) to consider if they are responsible to the audiences/constituents.

It took me about an hour of searching the Times, but I finally found the article I remember from seven years ago: More Members Are Plugged In, But Few Are Making Connections In 1998, a couple of Times reporters emailed 261 Congressional offices that addresses. Only 14% responded (and of those, some pointed out that they had given less priority to "out of district" questions.

With blogs, you'll get the bloggy-hip citizens connect with the bloggy-hip reps, and it will seem like blogging is the total solution. But that won't last forever. The scaling cannot handle it.

Now, granted, these numbers would likely be much higher for state office-holders, even today. But someone would have to survey blog vs. non-blog responses. Obviously, on a blog or forum, you've got the advantage that another person can answer the question. And again, we should be very interested in finding out how many citizens are satisfied to have a volunteer address their concerns. The highe rthe proportion, the easier it will be to scale.

Of course.

Don't forget Schundler's Blog for Reform. He's running in this year's increasingly competitive Jersey Republican Gubernatorial primary. He's posting on a regular basis and seems to be focusing on the issues in a really timely manner, responding to opponents and news.

Kate Kaye
Associate Editor
Personal Democracy Forum

Whether he is, as he claims, "the first elected blogger" (I'd have to do some research on that), the Commonwealth Conservative is an elected prosecutor in Virginia. At the same time, he uses a pseudonym - but regardless (or because of it), it's a fairly unvarnished and freewheeling political blog about Virginia politics. I wonder if it would be worth reading if he were writing in the open.

Thanks, Jon, for the comments. I have updated my site with an "About Me" section to help you out there. I do hope this campaign is the start of a trend, and I certainly hope that we can develop some useful best practices out of it for future candidates.

I agree that "who has a blog" is not the best measure, but I also don't think it's only about responsiveness. I think that it is about the quality of communication that this technology enables. For example, I think that the Times article is drawing the wrong conclusion - the problem with email is that it is very similar to snail mail in that it only facilitates one to one communication, while lowering the level of cost and difficulty in getting it sent. For a congressperson to respond personally to each of them is even harder than it would be to respond to all the written mail they receive, which only encourages the form letter - be it electronic or printed. I can only assume that if the Times sent 260 emails for this article, they probably weren't incredibly personal or probably even relevant - perhaps ignoring stuff like that is exactly what we want our representative to do.

I think that the trick is not to just be digitally connected, it is to develop or use tools that take advantage of this new medium. Why emulate the deficiencies of mail by using email, when you can be more creative? Why not have a forum where people can ask questions and they can be personally answered, and if the same question is asked again they are directed to the previous personal response? It's not personal attention, but isn't that better than a form letter? What about an online form to send an email to your congressperson, but it searches the forums for keywords to see if perhaps it's been answered elsewhere first? How about a community blog where anyone in the community can post, or an advanced threaded message board, or a podcast with a call-in line? These are things that provide better quality personal feedback, can make it easier on the official and their office in a manner that could easily scale, and can increase civic participation within the community.

I don't think email should be used on a 1 to 600,000 scale (my district) for communication, it's too expensive - I think it should be used for alerts or updates on an occasional basis, and all conversation should occur through more advanced online tools. Blogs are a great start, but comments are essential - at least then you have the beginnings of a real conversation that others can listen to on a basis that scales. The real question is what will do that job even better, that engages and involves more people and is easier on the candidate/representative?

Scott Chacon
http://www.jointheconversation.org

Scott-- thanks for your answer, you've been more than responsive! Right, the Times study of seven years ago was really a gimmick. I have the same answer for auditing responsiveness as I do for tying together to various components: we software engineers have to keep improving the software. That's what I call the civ efforts.

I guess I am the resident "blog bear" here, I always making sure we distinguish the potentially great things about participatory media from the problems still unsolved. Good luck.

This "civ" thing is great. Not everything is applicable since I, as a candidate (or representative), am not exactly trying to create a community. I am looking more for an effective feedback structure to a single person.

My end goal is not really to have everybody be able to effectively communicate with each other, although that would be great. The real goal is to allow everybody to effectively communicate with one person. It is not a many to many as much as a far more focused many to one and one to many. I am thinking of goals like :

* users get my personal responses to their questions and concerns
* users find that information quickly and easily
* if that information is not already there, be able to add the question
** and be notified when I respond
* users connect with me on a more personal level
* system can be kept up single handedly for 500,000 active users
* I don't have to address the same question more than once

I have written many of my representatives on many topics, and it would be great if instead of getting a form letter on congressional letterhead two weeks later, I can quickly find a simple page with a real response from the person, maybe an audio or video file of that person addressing that topic or issue, comments from other constituents on his or her response, possibly clarifications on those from the representative, and maybe some sort of voting system to register how I feel about that (ViewPoints) and a chance to add my own comment. That would be much more satisfying to me than the form letter or the press release or the third party 'sign our petition' drive, where mine is one of a thousand cookie cutter emails sent to that representative that day.

This response has been a bit wandering, but I just wanted to say I thought your link was very interesting. Thanks for the link and all the work you've put into the 'civ' idea - I will most likely be ripping bits of it off into my own site as I get the chances. Please keep me up to date on any ideas you develop or implement along these lines.

Thanks,

Scott Chacon
http://www.jointheconversation.org

Yes, I should clarify here that civ is a second-cousin to the Drupal/CivicSpace projects. Drupal is the engine which drives this site, PDF. I would work more on modularizing when I stop wasting time on PDF! Jon

Has started a blog.

Congressman Earl Blumenauer ( D-OR: 3rd District) isn't blogging yet, but he began hosting an online town hall chat with his constituents.