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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?

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.

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.