Space: The frontier all geeks care about. (Including those that vote.)

At least that's what I've learned from reading Eliza Strickland's piece in Wired, "I Love Mars, and I Vote."

Eliza reports on the role and responsibility Chris Carberry, political director of the Mars Society, will play in the upcoming Presidential race. As Eliza writes, "[Carberry is] the point man for Operation President 2008, in which Mars Society members lie in wait for presidential candidates at campaign stops in the early primary states, then leap out to pop the question: As president, would you send a man to Mars?"

Think about this for a minute: Carberry and his crew quite literally have to stake out the candidates on the campaign trail to get them to answer this important question. I'd be willing to bet $1,000 that Carberry and his crew would much rather be watching re-runs of Star Trek or looking through their telescopes at the stars than tracking down candidates like young opposition campaign operatives.

In other words, my instincts tell me that the "Mars vote" is yet another example of how modern media types can help a candidate win support one vote at a time on the Long Tail of politics.

So let's dig in and think about how we'd do it.

First I'd do a little research to find out that this group is very much a real deal organization. From Eliza's piece:

With yearly overall budget of about a quarter million, the Mars Society not only runs outreach efforts like Operation President, it also operates "Mars analogous" research stations in the Utah desert and the Canadian arctic. Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin sits on its steering committee, and so did NASA's current administrator, Michael Griffin, before he took the top NASA post.

But its real strength is its 7,000 passionate and devoted members in 80 chapters across the United States and worldwide. Zubrin says that while the group gets some large grants from science organizations and space agencies, members' donations make up the bulk of its funding.

Then I'd steal a moment with my candidate away from the kissing babies line and get him to send a personal video message to Carberry and the members of the Mars Society explaining exactly where he was on the issue.

I'd make it a point to brief my guy to finish his video to the group with a question and a challenge to the group and ask them for video responses on our YouTube video: What are your suggestions for my Administration on the role public-private sector partnerships could play in helping us achieve our mutual goal of safer, better, and faster space travel?

I would send the YouTube link to Carberry for distribution through his network.

But I wouldn't stop there. I'd also post the video on our blog asking our community to weigh in with video suggestions, and I'd ask a similar question through our candidate's LinkedIn network and let them know that we were talking about this issue on our blog and on our YouTube channel.

After the process cycled a bit. I'd have my candidate respond another time noting some of the suggestions he liked along with those he thought were a bit far-fetched. Repeat steps above.

During this next cycle, I'd reach out to space-focused bloggers and brief them on the discussion that's been going on and try and line-up a conference call about the issue with both my candidate and (hopefully) Carberry. Maybe some of these posts would spill over in to the larger discussion in the techosphere. Finally, I'd reach out to some folks at Slashdot and CNET with links of interest.

One thing is clear after this process: We'd likely be winning the "Mars vote." And maybe in the process of connecting with this niche we'd also win some other voters and supporters along the way.