If you can sign an electronic pad at the supermarket to pay your credit card bill, why can't you sign the touch-screen of your iPhone to sign a political petition? That question is now being put to the test by the Citizen Power Campaign in California, working with technology developed by a company called Verafirma.

This year’s European elections marked an all time high for disengagement and an all time low for turnout, reaching a meagre 43% pan Europe (that’s 20% - or a third - down on 30 years ago), worse even in the UK at an mightily undemocratic 34.7% (up from 24% 10 years ago mind).

What could a future White House 2.0 look like? How could millions of people collaborate to help govern the country? Jim Gilliam's web site, White House 2, is one possible answer, but there are many others. This session is going to start off with a presentation from Jim looking at the top challenges that came up when building the application, to see how his lessons learned might be applied on a larger scale. In an email note to his fellow panelists, Jim said he was going to focus on seven areas:

-virtual ballot stuffing

Craig Newmark committed what he termed a "crime against nature" at last week's Government Web Managers Conference when responding to a web manager who asked if he could use the free section of Craigslist to advertise his agency's free government information and services.

For the very first time in the recorded history of all of humanity, the 2008 election saw adult Americans who went online to engage in the political process outnumber those who didn't. Pew's Internet & American Life Project has a new report out that finds a full 55% of American grown-ups got on the Internet to get news about politics or the campaign (60% of adult Americans did this in '08), talk about politics with others (38%), or use specific tools -- i.e. Twitter, IM, email -- to send or receive messages about politics (59%).

One finding that jumps out from the Pew report is that Americans are trending towards relying upon sites for news and commentary that share their political perspective. In 2004, 26% of people who go online for politics reported that most of the sites they visit are in line with their political point of view, rather than a neutral source. In 2008, that moved up seven notches to 33%. The numbers are more striking for younger folk. In 2004, 22% of online users between the ages of 18 and 24 reported that a majority of the sites they visited shared their point of view. This cycle, that nearly doubled to 43%.

But that doesn't necessarily mean we're all wallowing in a pit of likemindedness. It might, instead, just mark the fact that we're consuming news for more sources. Even if I obsessively read the (objectively non-partisan) New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post online everyday, I'd only have to hit four ideological blogs in a day to make "most" of my sources slanted ones.

Here's another statistic from the Pew report that might catch your attention: supporters of John McCain were more likely than supporters of Barack Obama to be Internet users, 83% to 76%. Pew attributes that to the finding that Republicans tend to be wealthier and more highly educated than Democrats -- both strong predictors of Internet use.

The full report is here.

On the first full day of his presidency, Barack Obama issued an executive memo calling on the government to become more transparent, participatory and collaborative. He wrote:

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Of course, public participation is a two-way street. That's why, today, Personal Democracy Forum is proud to announce that we are partnering with a cross-partisan coalition of old and new media in launching "Ask the President," an open, collaborative, participatory forum where anyone can post a question and vote up their favorites. Our lead partners, The Nation magazine and The Washington Times, have committed to send a credentialed journalist to every presidential press conference armed with a list of the top citizen-driven questions, aiming to ask the President at least one generated by the public.

Over on O'Reilly Radar, Rep. Mike Honda of California has a guest post up that asks a very important question: "How can Congress take advantage of web 2.0 technologies to transform the relationship between citizens and government? Instead of viewing the public as a customer for services, I believe that we should empower citizens to become our partners in shaping the future of our nation." My hats off to Rep. Honda (and his internet staff guru Rob Pierson) for taking the leap. We all know the water of social media is fine, but most Congressmen are just preening at the edge of the pool with their one-way tweets and staff-written blogs. Rep. Honda is jumping in with both feet.

Check out this neat experiment in crowdsourcing from congressional watchdog Jerry Brito, the creator of StimulusWatch.org: He's asking for folks to help refine his testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform this Thursday.

While you can make a good living poking fun at the Texas legislature (just ask the late, great Molly Ivins), apparently the great state of Texas can claim one serious distinction: According to a new survey of state government information online, released for the start of Sunshine Week, Texas is the only state to provide information in twenty key categories. Most states do provide online information on high-profile topics like campaign financing and school test scores. But only nine provide schools' building inspections and/or safety ratings, and only 13 share school bus inspection reports. And the patchwork of disclosure practices is full of contradictions and absurdities:

From time to time, we receive submissions from entrepreneurs with ideas and/or products that we think ought to be of interest to PdF/tP readers. Running those pieces should not be construed as an endorsement of a specific product. Rather we welcome these submissions because it's important to build dialogue between technologists and politicos, that is, between the makers and users of new tools and services. In that spirit, we welcome this piece from J. Brooke Aker of Expert System USA. The Editors.

The Office of Public Liaison in the new Obama administration is promising to listen to citizens as it considers policy direction, legislation and brings the people to Washington rather than bringing Washington to the people. The most concrete of these proposals is to allow a five-day comment period by citizens via the Internet before the President signs any legislation. Even now, anyone can offer an opinion directly to the President here. You can contribute up to 5,000 characters. That is roughly 400 words.