Global Presidential Voting

Those of us not living in America can’t vote for the next president of the United States, but many of us have an opinion on who should be elected. If The World Could Vote,

who would be the next president of the United States of America?

That’s exactly what a new site, IfTheWorldCouldVote.com, hopes to answer. So far 89,176 people have voted from 168 countries. Just to put the viral nature of this site into perspective, on September 10, just 19 days ago, there were only 23,000 votes. It’s clear, people care about politics, and they want to be heard.

But the founders of IfTheWorldCouldVote.com have “an insanely ambitious goal,” Hjörtur Smárason told me, “To get more people to vote on our site than voted in the last US election. That’s over 122 million people.”

So how close are they? Well, “In the US presidential election in 2004 122,267,553 people voted. 6,500,000,000 people did not.”

So far on IfTheWorldCouldVote.com, 75,337 votes have been cast for Barack Obama and 13,839 votes for John McCain. Wow. There’s a clear leader there, but they’re still short 122,178,377 votes.

“Wouldn’t it be great to see what the whole world thinks?” the Iceland-based site asks. You bet! Which is why I cast my vote, and hope you will too. It’s free, there’s no signing up, and it only takes a second.