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The first internet election (no, not that one…)

I’m not a Unite Amicus member, so haven’t been following the current General Secretary election particularly closely, but I was interested to notice today that it seems to be the first union election where all the candidates have properly interactive online tools to promote their campaigns (last year’s NUJ DGS election nearly got there, but given it’s the new media union you’d expect them to).

This is interesting though, as it means all the candidates are potentially opening themselves (or at least their campaigns) up to comments and contact direct from members.

The four in the race at the moment are:

The fifth candidate, Laurence Faircloth, who recently dropped out in favour of Simpson, also had a blog, which has now been deleted.

There’s a big challenge starting to show through here. Barack Obama built a campaign on interactivity online, and is attempting to carry that over into office. The depth of engagement in these campaigns obviously isn’t remotely comparable with that (low level use of free tools only, rather than the kewlest bespoke network in the history of the grassw00ts, and registered users in the hundreds rather than millions – would that people got so worked up about union democracy ;)), but could the next joint GS of our biggest union, whoever it turns out to be, find that expectations of them are changed a bit as a result, and be more open to continuing online openness and access into their term at the helm of the union?

Pls to share (thanks!):