The Obama camp, in its continuing efforts to open up the dialogue between the government and its citizens, recently launched a new website feature on the transition team's website Change.gov that allows anyone to pose a question to the Obama team. Other visitors who like the question can then vote it up or down in Digg.com fashion, depending on whether or not they think the question is important and would like to see it answered quickly.
In an economy as tumultuous as this one, you might expect the top question to be how Obama will fix the economy, create jobs, restore the stock market to stable levels, or handle the mounting pile of debt added weekly by Congressional bailouts of industry. But you'd be wrong if you did.
Instead, the most popular question to the Obama administration was whether or not the President-elect plans to legalize marijuana. That's right, throw the economy, eliminating our oil addiction, handling terrorism and ending two wars out the window because Americans just want to smoke their pot and eat it too.
"Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can
regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new
jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?" asked a man from Denton, Ohio.
This top question, one of over 10,000 posed, has received nearly 8,000 "up" votes out of about one million votes cast from those who would also like an answer to it.
Another popular question - the seventh most popular on the website - inquires about Obama's stance on medical marijuana.
"13 states have compassionate use programs for medial Marijuana, yet
the federal gov't continues to prosecute sick and dying people. Isn't
it time for the federal gov't to step out of the way and let doctors
and families decide what is appropriate?" asked Greg from Minnesota.
Similarly, Bruce from Fort Collins, CO inquired how much longer the U.S. would wage a winless war against drugs.
The US "War on Drugs" wastes billions every year tracking down and
incarcerating non-violent users. What is your position on the
legalization of marijuana? How do you feel about treating rather than
imprisoning users of harder, addictive drugs?"
What exactly these trends say about Americans is nebulous at best. Given Obama's popularity among young adults and their proclivity to find cool websites faster than an Illinois politician can get in trouble, it's likely the data is skewed to overrepresent this group whose nightly habits don't quite mirror Joe the Plumber's.
On the other hand, Americans might just be fed up with politics as usual and are looking to sit back, relax, and watch their retirement funds disappear through a comfortable fog without being hassled by police.
Of course, not everyone on the site was consumed solely by their desires for legalizing the wacky tobacco. The second most popular question on the site with 6,000 "up" votes asked about restoring Constitutional powers from a woman in Seattle.
"What will you do as President to restore the Constitutional
protections that have been subverted by the Bush Administration and how
will you ensure that our system of checks and balances is renewed?" asked Kari from Seattle.
Following her serious lead, Diane from New Jersey's question about how the new administration will handle bailout oversight also stirred quite a bit of support. Likewise, James from Nashville's question about whether Obama will eliminate the stem-cell research ban within his first 100 days in office elicited nearly 5,500 up votes.
In total, 10,303 questions received nearly one million votes from 20,500 people. And even if the respondent population is skewed to bias particular policy areas, one thing is clear: the experiment in digital democracy seems a success.
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