Will the smartphone replace the ballot box?

BUENOS AIRES -- Democracy hasn't changed much since the 18th century -- at least until these two apps came along.

Speaking at a TEDx event in Buenos Aires in 2013, Pia Mancini told a rapt audience that democracy is trapped in the past. To illustrate her point, she flashed up a slide depicting a typical political scene from the '70s.

Not the decade of oil shocks, rotary phones and Bubble Yum.

The 1770s.

"Our democratic mechanisms have barely changed since the 18th century," says Mancini, an Argentine political scientist. "We go to the polls every two or four years, elect a politician -- and hope for the best. We're facing a crisis of representation."

Several frustrating years spent pounding the campaign trail on behalf of traditional parties convinced Mancini that this problem was not going to be fixed using the same old tools. So in May 2012 she and a group of like-minded people formed Net Democracy, a Buenos Aires-based foundation whose raison d'être is to develop digital tools to bridge the widening fissure between government and governed.

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/global-observer/will-the-smartphone-replace-the-ballot-box/#col=b57218c8-9f4e-4f3f-b982-3f0634b4fb01&colnm=Issue+20

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Someone finally did it Nadin, but of course not here ...