Tam Hunt: In an Effortocracy It’s Have Computer, Will Vote

http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/0208_tam_hunt_in_an_effortocracy_its_have_computer_will_vote/

By Tam Hunt

In this day and age, there's no reason we shouldn't elect to switch to online voting

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
— Winston Churchill, 1947

Democracy does indeed have its drawbacks and we can identify two broad themes: Failures as a result of the influence of powerful and moneyed interests on elected officials and failures as a result of the fear that choices by elected officials will not be easily explained to an electorate that has little time or attention for nuance. The cure for democracy’s failings, however, is not less democracy, but more direct democracy, empowering individuals through increased knowledge and new technology.

Public financing of all political competitions would go a long way toward fixing the first problem. Publicly financed candidates receive money from a common fund after passing muster as legitimate candidates. For example, candidates in some jurisdictions that have publicly financed elections must collect a required number of signatures or a required number of very small donations. Public financing relieves candidates of the pressure to collect money from the usual sources, such as wealthy individuals, corporations or unions, freeing them from implicit or explicit “strings” that come with such contributions.

Public financing is making slow progress in the United States, with states like Arizona and Maine ahead of the curve. The experience of these states has been very positive and the public financing movement is catching on elsewhere.

Surprisingly, California is far behind the curve, only recently passing into law a very limited public finance pilot program that will kick in by 2014, if it is approved by voters in a ballot initiative in 2010. We can do far better.

President Obama’s presidential campaign, and Howard Dean’s before him, demonstrated that high-profile national races could be financed in large part through small donations from thousands, or even millions, of individuals. This is a very encouraging development, demonstrating the ability of the Internet and other media to broaden our democracy and loosen the stranglehold of special interests. But even Obama’s campaign relied on large donations for about half of its total, and the large majority of political races just don’t receive enough attention from the public to make small individual donations a potent enough force to replace the power of special-interest money.

With many European and South American nations pioneering public financing, the trend seems clear, however: we are headed to a future in which more and more political races are unhitched from moneyed special interests. So it seems that in the coming decade or two, the problem of special interest money in the U.S. electoral process may eventually be solved, or at least diminished considerably.

The second problem — the lack of time or interest among the electorate to pay attention to nuance — will not be solved through public finance. It may never be solved because it may always be part of our culture that the majority lacks the interest in political or policy issues to devote enough time to understand the debates and elected officials’ votes on controversial issues.

There is one possibility, however, which I call the “effortocracy,” that would help in resolving this inherent problem. In the effortocracy, the 21st-century information network we call the Internet is combined with increased voting privileges to allow ordinary voters to become “super voters.” Essentially, those who demonstrate knowledge of our political system through standardized tests would earn enhanced voting privileges. And they could vote online, as though they were elected officials, on a wide array of policy issues in local, state and even national government.

Online voting is becoming more widespread, despite the snafus that have occurred with electronic (not online) voting. Various companies have developed online voting software platforms that directly address the security concerns inherent to any voting process that doesn’t involve traditional paper ballots. Online voting is allowed in many countries, including Australia, England, Estonia, Latvia and Switzerland. Latvia will allow online voting for all elections starting next month. In the United States, expatriates and military personnel have been allowed to vote online in various elections over the last few years. No major security problems have been reported.

So it seems that online voting is on the way. The only question is: how fast?

The second key ingredient in the effortocracy is a testing system that confers increased voting privileges on those who seek them. Voting rights for any person who is eligible under normal requirements are not infringed in any way. Rather, those who seek them — the “effort” part of the effortocracy — may in this proposed system earn additional voting privileges. These privileges would allow the “super voters,” those who have passed the required tests and thus demonstrated their knowledge and commitment, to vote on issues that would normally be voted on only by elected officials, or decided by government bureaucrats.

For example, a multifamily housing project that would normally be voted on by a city planning commission could be voted on by super voters. The super voters’ combined votes could represent an additional “seat” on the commission. Or it could, over time, even eliminate the need for permanent planning commission seats, depending on the level of interest among super voters.

Similarly, city councils or county boards, or even state and national legislatures, could have “seats” comprised of aggregated super voters. Or, again, they could eventually give way to a true direct democracy comprised of thousands or millions of super voters.

The effortocracy would allow those with the interest and time to become truly involved in policy and politics, with no privileged background or wealth required. All that would be required is a computer with a good Internet connection. The effortocracy would be completely transparent and would be far more immune from corruption or distortion than today’s political system.

The effortocracy represents a forward-thinking system that would go a long way toward fixing some inherent problems in all democracies today. It would not be perfect, but perhaps one day some wit will say that “effortocracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest that have been tried.”

— Tam Hunt is a Santa Barbara attorney.

http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/0208_tam_hunt_in_an_effortocracy_its_have_computer_will_vote/