How to implement a voting system?

Disruptive Technology: How would you design, implement, and launch a better system for voting?

• What is the system and how would you push it through the slow-moving government?

• Answer:

  The way forward is what I call direct deliberative democracy. The internet enables us to participate in something our forefathers only dreamt of: direct democracy. Direct democracy was never implemented because it was absurdly impractical. How could you get people living hundreds of miles from urban centers, themselves all hundreds of miles from the center of government, to have constant and fair voting in anything resembling a direct democracy? You couldn't. More pressing was the concern that voters would caught up in tides of popular sentiment. Legislation would reflect the whims of the people, and not revolve around a reasoned debate. Again, with everyone so unconnected, debate would never arise. Better to have representatives convene at the center of government to debate and legislate. But now we can have debates in real time. We can vote and legislate in real time. Political change need not happen once every two or four years. Revolutions can be minor, changes swift. And most of all, we can be at the helm. I think the only way to do this is not through government, but by building up so much latent demand for a particular system of governance that the government feels forced to act and adopt that system. Governments are lethargic and will likely only respond to groundswells. Even then, it's not a sure thing. Whenever I have more time (i.e. sometime long after my startup is not a #1 priority), I would love to implement this. I currently own the domain http://iConcur.org, and had previously started a non-profit organization called the Direct Democracy Foundation. Sadly, I had neither the funds nor the ability to develop back when I first wanted to do this; I was in college. That said, I've thought a great deal about the design of such a system. The most major concerns I have are: Force of law. How does popular legislation go into force? This hasn't ever really been dealt with before on a large scale. Facilitating debate. How can you keep debate going about certain topics? Prioritizing facts. In my design for iConcur, I had users cite facts in their comments on particular topics. Cited comments received visibility priority over uncited comments, thereby making political conversation more fact-based. Protecting minorities. How can we ensure the constitutional protections of certain minorities? This is particularly difficult since it would become unclear how the judiciary would interact with the legislative "branch," since it's no longer a branch of government but an arm of the people. Access. Not everyone has internet access. We would need a comprehensive plan to bring everyone online. Privacy. How do you prevent others from knowing how you're voting? The protection of the ballot box drapery goes away with online voting. One thought I had was to have special rooms in public libraries for voting. This point obviously deserves attention. Security. Given the nature of voting, security would need to be tight. That said, it could be far more difficult for fraudsters when "elections" are continuous rather than once in a blue moon.