True Democracy

written 30 Oct 2007 in the earliest morning

According to Wikipedia, the majority of Americans have Internet access. Hell, 7 out of 10 Chileans have access to the Web. For many of us, it’s not a matter of whether we can get online or not, but where we choose to do so from. Free wifi, our cell phones, the family computer, the one at our office, we’ve got computers all around us.

So why are we still electing officials to make our decisions for us? I receive this email on a weekly basis from Congress.org which is nice enough to tell me which of my elected officials are voting for what. It doesn’t explain what they’re voting for very well, and to read through a bill you’ve got to have as much time on your hands as it would take to write War & Peace, not to mention a degree in Political Bullshit, for everything you have to wade through to figure out what they’re saying.

But if all of America had a chance every morning or one morning a week or whatever the appropriate schedule might be to sit down at their computer, read through the latest list of issues, both in a condensed, “Here’s the gist of it” format as well as the full version, we could all get democracy back to being about the people. I think our Constitution mentions something about the people, right?

So yes, this isn’t exactly fair until every single person has access to the Internet, but I’d wager that if we have ubiquitous access to election polls, we could set up an adequately equal number of computers around the country for people to use. There might still be a need for elected officials, at first anyway, to actually come up with the laws that we’d be voting on, but eventually even they could be replaced by “Voterpedia.org” or something, where the more “Diggs” an issue got, the more worthy it was of being on the ballot that week.

Imagine a world without politicians, where it wasn’t so easy for tobacco companies and Big Oil or Ma Bell to buy a handful of people in Washington. If they wanted to spread their corruption, they’d have to do so by enticing at least 51% of the American population. Eutopia would surely follow.

Want more stories? A father, a son, a VW bus and all the open road at moseyho.me.

Filed Under: issues confronting us all

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7 people chatting it up...

  • I love your Voterdiggerpedia idea! It should exist. It seems like a lot of people just cant be bothered to keep abreast of the laws their elected congressman is voting on, perhaps even validating it by thinking its not our job to be keeping an eye on nitty gritty political stuff – thats what officials are being paid the big bucks for (which I disagree with entirely by the way). However since polls and surveys are the fast food of the Internet and almost everyone online believes that the world really wants to know their opinion on which toilet paper is best, Voterdiggerpedia could totally work.

    - Ms. Wakame | 10:32am 30 Oct 07

  • I agree on that. And even for those who aren’t informed and would still be voting, well they’re likely not informed when they elect their officials and even less informed as those officials do their jobs over the years.

    Democracy would spread like a Trojan virus! Or better yet, herpes!

    - nathan | 10:38am 30 Oct 07

  • I like how you guys always conduct your conversations on your blogs =)

    It’s an interesting proposal, but one that I really don’t think would work in reality (there I go again, always bursting bubbles!). The security ramifications of the idea…yes, it would be nice if I could cast my vote on whether or not I think this or that, but I don’t want abortion rights or stem cell research taken away based on who can hack the voting system the best. Additionally, I do not have the time, nor the desire to read through all the bills, and unfortunately, there is a reason why they are so jargonized (not always a good reason, but still). I don’t want them summed up in a few sentences which may leave out some of the nuances.

    I don’t have the time to make these decisions directly, nor do I really want to. I do think that there is a reason for elected officials, and I have no desire to do their jobs. But there are many things for which I would like to have more of a say, which is not easy today, and it is here that I think the internet could really help (which I do believe you were saying too).

    I do think it would be incredibly valuable to be able to have a more direct influence on your elected officials, and to be able to lessen the influence of the lobbyists. For instance, I would love to be able to actually allocate my tax dollars. Or I would love to be able to contact my congressman or senator more easily, send a “ping’ when something is important to me. I think it would be great to use the internet to more easily communicate with our elected officials. However, I don’t think it’s possible to have a direct influence quite to that extent.

    Just my two cents…I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

    - Julie | 11:30am 30 Oct 07

  • Yeah I agree with you, particularly on the whole security issue thing. Though their are many who would say that my connection to my account with PNC is more secure than the Diebold voting systems. Those people are crazy, I tend to agree, but Shawn sends me links to their YouTube videos and now I think the President not only planned 9/11, but he actually was the second tower.

    Also, an immediate switch to this type of a system wouldn’t be as feasible as slowing us into it. Tomorrow we vote for something small and work our way up over the years to more and more responsibility.

    And you’re right, there are a lot of intricacies to bills, but that’s where the masses would come in – people on blogs and YouTube would be explaining their interpretations of each bill which every American could then take into consideration, but it would be a more long term process rather than the current system where a handful of politicians put out commercials for a few months and make a bunch of promises, then break them all once they’re elected, only to do the same thing and trick us into forgetting before the next election.

    I also think that while it does seem like it would be a pain to read through every single bill, and somewhat unrealistic, there’s a bit of laziness there which most Americans probably have, taking our voting system for granted where other countries are still fighting to even have the right to vote, let alone dreaming of not being involved with the issues they’re voting for.

    Plus, you wouldn’t have to vote for every bill. For example, I might not give two shits about whether or not PennDOT allocates its money to bridges or sidewalks this year, but I would definitely be interested in voting on whether or not my block was going to be demolished to make way for a new, badly needed ninja dojo of some sort.

    But even the ability to make a loud noise go off in my elected officials ears every time I see them doing something I don’t approve of would would be nice. Maybe I can build that site…..

    - nathan | 11:38am 30 Oct 07

  • Oh and yeah, hahahha, that’s what I was thinking.

    My blog is going to be renamed “Nathan and Olivia’s alternative to email.”

    - nathan | 11:39am 30 Oct 07

  • hahaha very apt title.

    Totally agree in all points. I’ve been thinking of designing some sort of site like that for a while….but the security is a serious issue and I’m sure Bob would love to tell you all of Bruce Schneier’s ideas on the issues, but I’m not going to go into it here. One day…

    - Julie | 04:07am 31 Oct 07

  • i don’t know if you’d be for keeping your block or gaining the new dojo…

    - chad | 06:27pm 1 Nov 07

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