It may be anathema to say this, but I have not always been the biggest fan of democracy.
The whole idea of one person having one vote struck me as extremely odd. How can one vote be equal to another? Let me give a hyperbolized example:
The impulse vote of a drunk videogamer should not have equal weight to the researched vote of a well-informed medical practitioner ~ particularly if the issue being voted on is one about medicine!
The example may be extreme, but it illustrates the point. Why shouldn’t an expert have more say?
One response I have heard to this argument is that equal weight provides us an incentive to keep our peers well-informed. Reputable news sources with accurate citations that are free of bias should be checked to help one form their opinions on any matter, and one could encourage their peers to stay informed using these sources.
Personally I have found you cannot force facts upon others. Refuting whatever 45-minute anti-vax ramble they send you from Odysee or Bitchute is like water off a duck’s back to them- they’ll post another the next day.
An exciting thing about moving voting to an entirely digital system would be the idea of having candidate profiles built into a cryptographically secure “app”. Before casting your vote for any candidate, you could see their record of accomplishments and how they had voted on other issues in the past.
This would be a great improvement on the method currently used for voting, since it would give voters more background information and context.
A further development could be that, in weighted transhumanist democracy, voters could vote specifically on the relevant issue or policy, rather than just voting for someone who would implement the policy.
Different people’s opinions could have different value based on their knowledge and ability. The app could build a “profile” of one as an individual to weight their votes on various topics- a nurse could have a “heavier” vote on issues related to health care than would a truck driver. A truck driver, conversely, would have a heavier vote on issues related to highway infrastructure.
A major flaw of this implementation would be that, of course, each individual in an industry would regularly vote that more funding be granted to their industry.
The same age-old conundrum of voters as a whole wanting more public services but lower taxes each election would still exist, but digitization would bring more voices into the conversation, and more opportunities for consensus.
Cybersecurity would be paramount with this venture. Even now online rating systems are abused by “bots” that give five-star ratings to organizations that have not truly earned them. Votes for policy would have to be definitively tied to a certain individual.
One way to do this could be with DNA. An individual would have to submit a drop of blood to get a device that all voting actions would take place on, these could be distributed from a central trusted location.
This trusted root source could then verify other verifiers, creating a network of verification that all went to a central root source that validated the person’s device via DNA. This is similar to how Certificate Authority architecture works with that little “lock” icon you can see to the left of the URL on this page.
Try clicking that lock, and then click “certificate”.
Two-way trust is ensured by this certificate- it does not just validate to you the identity of this website, it also shows us that you are who you say you are (or at least your device).
Identity management could be implemented such that people could have one trusted device they do all their voting with, and that could make our system more able to grow and evolve to better serve the electorate. Their profile on that device could be tied to real world data that would determine the weight of their votes.
Having everything on one digital device would be better than standing in line for hours during a pandemic to go into one crowded building and mark answers on a scantron.
Let’s Transhumanize voting:
1. We should be able to vote digitally on policy and representatives from a trusted digital device.
2. Experts’ opinions should matter more than laymen’s’.
3. The system should evolve, and different areas could test different systems (ie: ranked choice)
October 11, 2021 at 7:17 pm
I like the idea of giving experts more voting power. The other question how to justify the idea that the majority knows what it is right. If the majority votes to wipe out a minority, should we do it because it is democratic?
November 5, 2021 at 9:07 pm
It’s a good idea that could work. It would be complicated, and it would need the best technology but could, in theory work. One problem i see is rooted in the data privacy issue. We would need to have a secure way of measuring the difference of expert and layman, which mean giving up their personal data in exchange for some measure of weighted vote.
The Data privacy issue could be solved with digital proxies the verify you without giving away the data. a network of digital proxies would verify each other.
So I agree with number 1 I have no doubt the tech would work
and I agree with number 3 but before i could say i agree with number 2 that experts votes should matter more, everything else in numbers 1 and 3 and the whole infrastructure would need to be built first. At that point it may not matter as much, and the parameters may be different.