Hack Democracy: Making Politicians Incorruptible

in politics •  8 years ago  (edited)


Problem

     It is a nearly intractable problem to measure the numerous interests that are navigated by a politician deciding a position on an issue.  There are attempts at regulating campaign contributions, lobbyist and business interests, but they are all routinely circumvented.  Even in the best circumstances, a politician is always guilty of picking a small number of interests over all the others.  It is an intrinsic property of choosing.  Even if the paragraphs below reveal a magical solution, powerful interests would block it or lose influence.  Changes to the system would be difficult.  Unless.. A virus is injected into the system that bypasses the resistance to change.


Democracy Virus

     The hack injects a virus into the system which will tend to spread and take control of the hosts functions - very much as a biological virus does.  Let's focus on congress for clarity - although analogs of this virus exist for the judicial and senate branches as well.   If the system isn't changed, the change can't be resisted.  The federal tier of our government is left unchanged, sharply limiting its capacity to resist the virus.  At the state level, the virus is injected in the form of candidates who contractually bind themselves to an eDemocracy of constituents on penalty of treason - as a platform.  They are literally a puppet of the people.


eDemocracy

     There is little trust in electronic voting.   There is a solution to that.  For my micro-dissertation on fraud-proof internet voting, see here: https://steemit.com/politics/@dsonophorus/the-solution-to-voter-fraud

In a few sentences, the eDemocracy can be explained as implementing a voting system with top to bottom transparency to refute corruption.  All votes are a matter of public record and can be verified by any voter at any time.  Furthermore, all citizens participating in the eDemocracy must be provably valid citizens of that constituency.  Their identity is public record, but their votes may electively be anonymous to provide a degree of protection against forms of intimidation.  Majority rule, where all votes are weighted equally, is the simplest form the eDemocracy can take.  It is by no means the only form.  The specific form and implementation of the eDemocracy is a matter best left for exploration by each constituency.


Implications

There are many implications of this system.  Besides restoring a large portion of real influence to the people, it restores something perhaps more important.  Trust.  If there is ever any controversy, each step is publicly and continuously verifiable.  eDemocracy candidates are effectively immune to lobby because they have no influence themselves.   Lobbying is pushed down toward the grass roots and will reappear as targeted toward high merit/influence citizens and general opinion control technology.  Political parties are in existential threat of being obsolete.  Party lines are no longer important compared to the actual details of an issue.  I would expect candidates from existing parties to have an extremely difficult time competing against eDemocracy candidates.  The blame game is deflated in prominence because it has a direct line to the bottom and it forces everyone to be accountable.  It invites people to be more involved in issues by providing more tangible access to change.  I think this all culminates in an important shift of perspective where the citizens move from a passive perspective to a more active one as stakeholders.  


Thank you for your time.


Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

Presidency or even senators by lottery just like how juries are chosen will be the best way to prevent corruption, make their power hierarchy meaningless and therefore incorruptible.

By making decisions with a dartboard? That would make them incapable of any coherent agenda, good, bad or otherwise. Lol, kind of an anti-statist's fck you to the system.