• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, December 29, 2008

MoveOn.org has determined its 2009 agenda the Web 2.0 way--by allowing its members to vote online for the key goals the liberal activist group should focus on next year.

The winners: Universal health care, economic recovery and job creation, building a green economy and stopping climate change, and ending the war in Iraq.

The top issues chosen were the result of an online nomination process that began Dec. 15 and received more than 78,000 responses. Members then voted on the 10 most popular goals, which drew a total of 806,707 ballots cast over two days.

Nearly 65% selected universal health care as a key goal, followed closely by economic recovery at 62%. Growing a green economy and ending the Iraq war both won support from close to 50% of MoveOn members. Other top 10 agenda items voted on include improving public schools, restoring civil liberties and holding the Bush administration accountable.

MoveOn, which says it has 5 million members, will surely be expecting a lot from President-elect Barack Obama's administration after giving strong support to his campaign and the Democratic party during the presidential election.

Those efforts included enlisting prominent ad agency veterans to create anti-John McCain spots, creating an anti-McCain trivia game on Facebook, and a viral video campaign asking people to create 30-second ads in favor of an Obama presidency.

How closely MoveOn and the Obama administration will work together on shared goals remains to be seen. Stephen Geer, director of email and online fund-raising for the Obama campaign, indicated earlier this month that the massive email list Obama assembled would most likely be used to create an online advocacy community like MoveOn.

He told audience members at MediaPost's Email Insider Summit earlier this month that Obama's email database is so much larger than MoveOn's that using it to form a new advocacy group would be "seismic."