News release 2007-12-13:

Voter-Funded Media at SFU

$300 award pool for January 2008; entry fee waived for first 10 contestants, starting December 16

Vancouver – A new political media competition is now being launched at Simon Fraser University, as a democratic reform experiment. Students, faculty and staff will vote to award funds to competing media that serve the SFU community. Called voter-funded media or VFM, its long-term goals are to improve policy and reduce corruption in democracies and corporations.

Any individual, group or organization can enter the competition. Anyone with an SFU computing ID can vote. See www.votermedia.org/sfu for info and the entry form.

The contest will run on a monthly cycle, with votes tallied at the end of each calendar month. Award pool for January 2008 is $300; annual award budget is about $5000.

Sponsored by financial economist Mark Latham (www.votermedia.org/about-contact.html), the contest is a second-generation design that evolved from the January 2007 voter-funded media contest at UBC (www.votermedia.org/democracy/UBCcontest2006-2007.html). At UBC, the media funding vote was appended to the annual student union election ballot. SFU’s contest is the first year-round continuous voting design.

SFU student Titus Gregory reported on the January 2007 UBC contest in his blog at www.studentunion.ca/2007/01/ubc-elections-experiment-in-voter.html.

Student unions at several other universities are considering VFM contests – see http://votermedia.blogspot.com/2007/11/vfm-status-updates.html.

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CONTACT:

Mark Latham - Founder, VoterMedia.org

Email: mark[at]votermedia.org

Voicemail: (604) 608-9779