Seattle Councilman wants to poll city's silent majority

August 7, 8:58 AMSeattle People ExaminerLaura Vecsey

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Are we wired or what? And we're not just wired on those $2 Starbucks frappuccino's that Howard Schultz was hawking like some latter-day discount broker this week. We're wired on the Internet -- a fact that Seattle City Councilman Bruce Harrell wants to capitalize on in order to make our local government more efficient and more responsive to what we, the people, might truly want.

What DO we want, Seattle?

Councilman Harrell, the former Uinversity of Washington football player whose high grade-point average out of Garfield High prompted Harvard to recruit him -- is onto something here. For  far too long, Seattle has been comprised of an amorphous sort of constituency. Maybe that's because 60 percent of people aren't from Seattle and of that number, 55 percent of Seattleites spend most of their time hiking alpine trails or snowboarding down some Cascade mountain.

It is "virtually" impossible to herd our cat-like body politic into an sort of consensus, which explains, in part, why it has taken 30 years too long for Seattle to fix its critical mass transportation issues.

Harrell makes a stunningly smart point that if we always wait to find out what Seattle will -- or will not -- support (pay for) via ballot measures, we might never get close to resolving the big-ticket issues we the people must face.

So Harrell is proposing: Electronic polling.

Here's Harrell's rationale:

"Approximately 83% of Seattle residents use the Internet and have a computer at home and Seattle is one of the most wired cities in the United States. Costly advisory ballots are not the answer and our continued reliance on traditional polling strategies and archaic note taking are outdated and inexact.

"Listening and leading are not mutually exclusive. We value public process in order to gain input. Most of the input usually comes from listening to a limited number of committed citizens, community activists, special interest groups and professional lobbyists.

"Listening is a science and the technology exists that can significantly broaden our city's outreach capability and quantify the opinions of our citizenry. If we prioritize this policy, it will dramatically change how we serve our public."