In preparation for their fifth annual Personal Democracy Forum conference to be held in New York City June 23-24, the folks at the website of the same name have issued this challenge to essayists:

When the Framers met in Philadelphia in 1787, they bravely conjured a new form of self-government. But they couldn’t have imagined a mass society with instantaneous, many-to-many communications or many of the other innovations of modernity. So, replacing that quill pen with a mouse, imagine that you have to power to redesign American democracy for the Internet Age. What would you do?

The page with contest details sets the deadline for writers at May 1 and describes how you can also vote for essays written by others.

An excellent resource for the Smart Mob approach to the subject of this contest is an article Howard Rheingold wrote last fall titled “Using Participatory Media and Public Voice to Encourage Civic Engagement.” The article abstract begins:

Teaching young people how to use digital media to convey their public voices could connect youthful interest in identity exploration and social interaction with direct experiences of civic engagement.