Online town hall is an innovative way to reach voters

Steve Terrell of the Santa Fe New Mexican and Kate Nash of the Albuquerque Tribune wrote revealing articles today on the online town-hall meeting held Tuesday evening by Albuquerque Mayor and U.S. Senate candidate Martin Chávez. Read their words if you want the details.

What I want to say after participating in the event is that it was awesome. People from around the state got watch Chávez talk about topics including health care, Iraq and the environment. They got to ask questions by typing them into a chat box on the Web page. The chat box doubled as a place for discussion of the mayor’s remarks.

People from cities including Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Las Cruces and Washington, D.C. attended. That included students in Ken Hacker’s persuasion graduate seminar at New Mexico State University.

There were, at the height of participation, only about 90 computers logged on, but it was a great introduction of such a tool in New Mexico. I would expect the number of participants in future meetings to grow significantly.

This is a great way to personally reach interested voters. Chávez has promised to do it again. The technology is fairly simple, and I hope other candidates for federal, state and local offices follow his lead.