An idea to reach midlings: strike a balance between preaching to the choir and one-on-one campaigning  

I had a chance to call in to NewsGang Live on Friday, and asked the group what online types might do to influence undecided voters.

There's a slice of voters at the bottom who will never consider Obama and we'll never reach them. And I came to realize a while back that ranting on my blog reaches only a few people and I'm quite sure most are already on the Obama bus. Don't you think most blogs with election content are mostly preaching to their own choirs?

So what to do to reach that middle group? The group's consensus was "talk to people face to face," and I've done that -- I canvassed door-to-door for the Indiana primary, and might summon up enough energy and against-my-nature will to help out in that way in Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa for the general election.

As a believer in the power of the internet, though, I still keep wondering if there isn't something that could be done that has more reach.

Tell me if you think something like this could work:

Organize a place on the web where undecided voters could sign up to hear from two penpals, an Obama supporter and a McCain supporter. The conversation takes place in e-mail, and it's three-way, all three participants are copied on every exchange.

There might not be one group independent enough to organize such a thing, so it would be done as a cooperative project by the two camps, maybe two major blogger groups? Not sure about that part.

Penpals also would register on the site, and agree to certain terms, like "I won't enter into a two-way conversation" (or isn't that important, I don't know) and "I won't get too rabid." Of course these exchanges might get heated, in the same way voices can be raised in a dinner table conversation.

The best part would be emulating in-person canvassing so the voter's pet issues can be the central focus.

Let me know what you think on FriendFeed.

(The NewsGang episode isn't up, might not ever get published; a few aren't.)

Looking good, Dave 

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