I've banged my head over a similar idea for a while, and I have failed to figure out a viable monetization strategy that won't compromise such a service eventually. The best I've come up with is that it must start at bottom and move up. From local communities and the governments that manage them, the power could be slowly drained away from the federal level (and even the state) eventually leading to a more decentralized system that is less susceptible to corruption (which obviously requires constant vigilance on the part of the local communities).
So what about a site that allows local communities to organise and co-ordinate? Your big problem would be astroturfing, but if you did it right, it would be as simple for them to arrange for 'Lets get rid of taxes on oil firms" as "Lets get the garbage taken out properly in the xth district in y area", then to link them together.
I think the key thing is to disrupt the lobby structure. If we can do that as well as MP3 downloads disrupted the RIAA then we win.
What about a social-network-like site where people communicate directly with their elected officials?
This would need someway to make sure that the politician was actually looking at the site and not just the delegating it to subordinates. Having a direct line to these politicians (that cuts past all of the subordinates that answer email, snail mail, etc) is one of the strengths of lobby groups.
There is one, but I can't remember the name of it right now. I spent a week going through lots of it to see what kind of activity, but there was very little. On top of that, there were lots of people just barking non-nonsensical and/ or derisive remarks at the various federal politicians; and, absolutely zero participation from any of the politicians themselves.
This is why I suggested to start in a small community first. In order to keep it relevant to people that live in that community, the only thing that made sense was to authenticate users via post cards (with OTP passcodes) sent to an address within a zipcode (In my town they send out a community news page with my water bill). My thought was to keep it to short messages realted to only municipal maintenance issues and try to build from there. Funding it would be the biggest obstacle in my mind, so if anyone has specific ideas there, that'd be great.
