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Ameritocracy, which just launched into invite-only public beta, is a new political site that helps people cut through the noise and rate and review political information for credibility and relevance. The site helps users to sort through the sea of information we're pummeled with via the media each day and pull out the more credible and relevant bits, while working together to discredit the information that isn't on the level. 100 ReadWriteWeb readers can get access to the site right now by signing up with the invite code: "readwrite"

A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project reveals that 46% of Americans have used the Internet, email, or text messaging to get or share election information this year. 35% have watched online political videos -- triple the number that watched video online in 2004, while 39%, according to the study, have turned to the web for "unfiltered" campaign information, such as raw video or transcripts of speeches and debates. But Americans aren't convinced that all this social media business is a good thing for politics.

Launched a couple of weeks ago by U.S. Representative John R. Kuhl, Jr., a Republican from New York's 29th District, the "Fix Washington" project aims to make DC politics a user generated affair. Noting that the majority of Americans aren't happy with the way Washington is run, Kuhl is soliciting ideas for bills until July 18th. Kuhl will then choose his favorite 5 submissions and users will vote for the best, and the winning idea will be introduced on the floor of the US House of Representatives. It's a novel idea, certainly, but is it a good one?

This week Barack Obama won the Democrat nomination for US President, pitting him against Republican candidate John McCain. At the same time both candidates have ramped up their web efforts, with Obama's camp calling for web developers to "Write Software, Change Washington" and McCain's camp launching a new-look website. In this post we check out the latest web developments in the race to become the next US President.

Outsourcing research and development to customers via Digg-style voting is a hot trend for tech-savvy companies right now. Dell did it with IdeaStorm (our coverage), Starbucks did it with My Starbucks Idea (our coverage), and Salesforce did it with IdeaExchange. The concept has now made the leap to politics with Oh Boy Obama, an unofficial "online think tank" in which supporters can vote on ideas that they think Barack Obama should pursue in his presidential campaign.

TechPresident points to and interesting article today from the Yale Journal of Law & Technology (draft version of article set to appear in 2008-2009 Fall Issue) that proposes a new form of open government that encourages the closure of government web sites. The idea is that US government web sites are so notoriously bad, they should just be torn down in favor of private sector alternatives. But this is more than just a privatization push, this is about turning the government into a data platform.

Facebook and MySpace have replaced email for a substantial number of young people. Facebook, though, appears to believe that some things are better off not discussed in conversations between its members.

We've found two instances of words that will get a Facebook message blocked and we presume there are others. The company says it's spam control, but it seems creepy to us.

Even though last night's big contests in Kentucky and Oregon ended in a split decision, with big wins for both Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, most pundits now agree on who is most likely to be the Democratic nominee for president when the convention rolls around in August. Hint: it's the candidate who has dominated nearly every method we could think of to measure election momentum on the web. We got some data last night from widget-provider Widgetbox that shows the same trend for viral widget installs.

There's no denying that the campaign of Barack Obama has embraced social networking and new media like no campaign in history. Obama has accounts on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, Flickr -- even on niche social networks AsianAve, MiGente, and Faithbase. And Obama, or someone in his campaign, actually uses the accounts and keeps them up-to-date. Could it be that likely Democratic nominee for president is actually using bleeding edge, early adopter-friendly lifestream aggregator FriendFeed? Actually, uh, no. That's not him.

The knock on the type of representative democracy that is employed in the US is that the people aren't actually voting on the legislation that gets passed -- representatives for the people are doing it for them. And those representatives are potentially beholden to outside influences like political action committees and lobbyists who help them raise money necessary to get elected. The system is supposed to weed out the bad eggs via regular elections (if your rep isn't representing you, don't vote for he or she next time around), but maybe that's not good enough. Enter Govit, a site that lets citizens weigh in on bills currently being voted on in the US House and Senate.