The Christian Science Monitor talks about the Ethics of open-source campaign era, and there's a lot of food for thought as we consider democracy, government - and what they were originally intended to accomplish.

The whole concept of democracy was the people ruling through elected officials. The whole power of democracy isn't the vote - it's the free and open discourse that precedes the vote. The vote only measures the effect, and does so questionably - though a better system has not yet been devised.

...Because modern election-campaign messages are so well crafted, the resulting campaigns are also open source. At their core is a message that is (like Linux), simple, stable, and easy to understand. The basic strategy is transparent. Independent groups can take over certain electioneering functions. The message is simple, so it's easy to fit outside efforts into an overall strategy without ever needing to coordinate with the home office. MoveOn.org can appoint itself the "Kerry attack machine" just as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth can pick up the "angry pit bull" mantle for the Bush organization, without knowledge or approval of campaign management.

In politics, there aren't any such norms. The stakes seem high enough to justify almost anything. And there is simply no way to curtail the free speech that independent groups are exercising without eviscerating a core freedom we hold dear in America...

It's not just the United States, either - but other countries aren't as quick to come up with similar things because the technology isn't being used.

So what does the future hold? I suppose we'll have to wait around and find out, but in the interim it might be a good idea to revisit the ideas that democratic governments were founded upon.