I’m fairly sure this will be the one and only time I will ever say this, but I wish I had the right to vote in Finland. In what may well be the first time a politician running for a national office has based his campaign on appealing to geeks (and not just any geeks, mind you, but geeks who understand Klingon), Jyrki J.J. Kasvi, current member of Finland’s Parliament, just relaunched his website in four languages – Finnish, Swedish, English and, yes, Klingon.

“pe’vIl parmaq vIvoq. qo’ vIDub vIneH; motlhwI’ vIqaD vIneH; ngoch ngachlu’taHvIS qechmey chu’ vIchel vIneH,” states Kasvi in Klingonese. Translation: “I strongly trust in love. I want to improve the world, challenge standards, and add new ideas when policies are being debated.”

The self-described “Internet Politician 1.0″ bases his candidacy of a platform of equality of possibilities, unity of freedom and responsibility, democracy, civil society, pluralism and tolerance – values that would make Kasvi a shoe-in for a Federation Council seat, and, apparently, a seat on the Finnish council as well.

Kasvi is clearly a geek himself: With a Ph.D. in engineering from Helsinki University of Technology, Kasvi worked as a research scientist until 2003 when he was elected to the Parliament after running his first Internet-based campaign.

Kasvi says on his site that the Internet is rapidly becoming the great equalizer in politics. “In the web, campaign budgets do not decide elections,” Kasvi claims. “The Internet is going to become the greatest upheaval of Finnish democracy since female vote in 1907. In the web, candidates’ thoughts will be more important than the generosity of their sponsors.”

Imagine that: A world where government officials are elected based on how well they compete in the marketplace of ideas, instead of just the size of their campaign war chest. I’m not convinced we’re there quite yet, but I really like the sound of that.

And, who knows? Based on the number of Americans who’ve posted messages on Kasvi’s site praising his platform, perhaps Klingon is an idea whose time has come.

You’ll find Kasvi’s site at www.kasvi.org. If you have trouble viewing it, be patient. Apparently, word is spreading fast about the first Klingon candidate, and the server crashed at least once today from an abundance of traffic.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 11th, 2007 at 2:06 pm and is filed under HOME, TECH, ENTERTAINMENT, NEWS, GEEK CULTURE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.