Votes from the Future
Forget 2022. The 2032 election is fast approaching.
Alexander Stone wakes up with a smile on his face.
After all, turning 18 is momentous in anyone’s life. This young man feels especially radiant today because he has earned the right to vote, a privilege that he plans to exercise immediately. He rolls over in bed and, typically of most teenagers, picks up his phone. But instead of scrolling through Twitter, Alex moves straight to the Digital Democracy app, where he has been following a key piece of environmental legislation as it moves through the U.S. House of Representatives. A vote is scheduled for next week, and he is itching to show his support, but the app didn’t grant him a digital voting token until his 18th birthday, so the most he could do was set his text alerts to let him know what amendments were being considered. Now, however, he’s ready to make the move.
Alex sees his bill on top of the tracking list, a personalized feed of recommended legislation, which uses machine learning algorithms to curate the hundreds of proposed bills that come through Congress each year. In his case, he has set his preferences to track climate change, education policy, and gun control. His grandmother, a retired nurse, monitors for abortion, social security, and healthcare legislation.
After clicking on the climate change bill and confirming that no significant amendments have been proposed, Alex decides to vote yes. He mashes the button with a satisfied sense of purpose. The app asks for his thumbprint and PIN code to confirm his identity, and his voting token is sent. An additional confirmation screen pops up, showing that his vote has been added to the total tally for his Congressional district.
Out of about 400,000 registered voters in Virginia’s 8th district, about 55,000 have cast a vote on this bill so far, with the supporters currently leading by a 66% to 34% margin. This is a relatively high number, because a lot of legislation moving through Congress will receive fewer than 10,000 votes in any given district. Not everybody cares about naming Post Offices or freeways, but a landmark climate change policy draws a lot of attention in this heavily progressive northern Virginia suburb.
Alex watches his token get added to the total and feels pretty confident that his Congressman will be voting Yes, given where the vote count stands. But, just to be sure, he posts his token confirmation to his social media feed, asking his 300,000 Twitter followers to support the legislation. His followers are scattered around the United States, some of whom live in Congressional districts that are still using the old voting process. Sadly, they have to wait every two years for an election, form a long line at their polling station, be handed a paper ballot, and pick a candidate from one of the two assigned choices. It’s hard to imagine that people still vote this way in the year 2034, but old habits die hard.
Alex heads downstairs for a bite to eat. His parents are at the breakfast table, so he excitedly shows them his voting token status screen, and duly receives a hug from mom and a pat on the back from dad. Annoyingly, his older brother Roy feels compelled to one-up Alex by showing his own status bar. Roy boasts about casting 3,000 votes since his own 18th birthday, which was only 2 years ago, and says he’s currently tracking 7 pieces of legislation on esoteric issues like the farm bill and trade relations with South Korea. It’s tough being a little brother, especially when Roy is already a top-500 super voter in their district by the age of 20 and on track to compete in the State championship this year.
Alex was only a toddler in 2020, so he has no memories from one of the most contentious, bitter, and oft-disputed elections in American history. But that election dragged the country out of a period of collective hubris about the stability of its political system, which then created an opportunity to reimagine everything. The old-timers talk about how they survived the political chaos, foreign intrigue, riots, pandemic, economic collapse and insurrection with a sense of hopelessness about whether America would survive at all. Yet, this madness also produced digital democracy, giving voters direct control over every single law, which uprooted the old power structures for good and breathed life into a withering republic.
Gone are the days of secret 11th-hour negotiations to decide on legislation without public debate. The lobbyists have long since left Washington, because it is now impossible to bribe a key committee member given that every politician is an automaton, voting exactly as their districts tell them. Special interest groups have retrofitted themselves to speak directly to voters about niche issues, rather than operate as elite power brokers. The press has ditched its left versus right marketing positions, and has been forced to become more nuanced. The political parties are struggling to maintain their grip on the few districts that still vote the old way, usually by terrifying retirees into believing that technology can’t be trusted. And yet, the mobile app still has not been hacked, the blockchain seems to be doing its job, and the writing is on the wall for the two-party system. Voter participation is sky-high and people around the world look on with awe to a rejuvenated America that most had left for dead.
The best part about the new approach, as his dad tells him, is the end of years of tribalist division that had destroyed so many relationships. Alex’s dad and grandpa went through a long stretch where they refused to speak to one another — even skipping weddings and funerals — simply because of who the other had voted for. This is hard to imagine these days, because Alex doesn’t know many people who identify as Republican or Democrat. Political parties don’t make much sense when a person can easily vote in favor of abortion and against gun control with the same mobile app. Nobody really knows what anyone else is voting for, because the voting tokens are encrypted, unless you make it public on purpose. Nobody wastes time trashing any particular politician, because the legislators don’t matter that much. In the end, a Congressman is forced to vote yay or nay based entirely on the majority rule for his district, or he risks being thrown out of his job. His personal opinions, experiences, wealth, connections, and motivations simply don’t matter anymore. Those who campaign on direct democracy know what they are getting, and they accept that there is no power or glory to be had.
This new crop of anti-politicians are mostly technocrats who enjoy explaining the minutiae of public policy in an unbiased way, so that their constituents understand all the ramifications of a vote for or against. This is not trivial work, because members of Congress have limited time to research the hundreds of pieces of legislation that move out of committee in a given session. A typical Congresswoman does her best to highlight a few key bills that require the focus of her constituents, then explains from the point of view of both supporters and detractors. She describes how it may be amended to provide a compromise that can satisfy both sides, and how it will affect American policy overall, such as its financial cost, benefits to society, or impact on foreign government relations. She is wise not to express her own opinion on the matter, so as not to lose the faith of her district, and then she posts all of this information in the Digital Democracy app to open up the voting for everyone with a valid token in her district. Let the best ideas win.
The more obscure bills tend to end up as the focus of the scattered legions of experts living around the country who like to argue the finer points of energy market regulation or industrial safety codes. Online tools like Kialo help rationalize large scale debate and various crowdsourcing platforms allow citizens to write the bills directly. Rather than members of Congress being handed legislative language by special interest groups, the new process takes advantage of the millions of Americans whose combined expertise helps craft the right approach, without all the inherent conflicts of interest.
Alex finishes his breakfast and heads to the study to login to his first class of the day. He is a freshman at Georgetown, majoring in political economy, and half-way through a semester on the origins of western democracy. Donning an augmented reality headset, he greets a few of his friends and finds a virtual chair in the lecture hall. A discussion about ancient Athens starts an interesting dialogue between a few of the students and the professor that goes something like this:
Jesse: “If Athenian democracy was so great, then why did they give it up. Why did every other democratic nation choose to be a republic instead?”
Dr. Taylor: “Athens allowed citizens to vote on every matter of State, which required voters to be physically present for debates. That may work for a city-state in 600 BCE, with only about 60,000 eligible voters at its height. By 1776, the American colonies had 2.5 million citizens and it took months for the delegates to travel to the Continental Congress, so direct democracy was implausible. It took 21st century technology to make it possible.”
Jorge: “Wait, so you’re saying that it was just a logistical nightmare? What about the risk of mob rule?”
Dr. Taylor: “It is certainly true that many of the checks and balances built into our system of government were meant to ‘cool the passions’ of the people, but it’s worth considering that the founders weren’t exactly representative of the overall population.”
Sarah: “Yeah, weren’t they all wealthy, well-educated white men, most of whom owned slaves and prosperous businesses?”
Dr. Taylor: “Indeed. In fact, the mobs that James Madison and others describe, such as during Shays’ Rebellion, were mostly poor farmers fighting against perceived economic injustices. The founding fathers didn’t necessarily want to share power with those people, hence why Presidents were chosen by the Electoral College and Senators were appointed by the State legislators.”
Alex: “Are you suggesting that a republic is inherently class-based?”
Dr. Taylor: “Not really. Even the Athenians held slaves and didn’t allow women to vote. Whether it’s a monarchy, democracy or republic, the people already in power generally don’t like to share.”
Jorge: “You didn’t really answer my question about mob rule. What protects us from the demagoguery of the masses?”
Dr. Taylor: “We still maintain many of the checks and balances that protect us from ‘mob rule,’ such as the the Constitution and Bill of Rights, separation between the House and Senate, devolved power in the States, and an independent judiciary. These prevent laws that persecute religious or ethnic minorities, for example, so it’s not truly a direct democracy in the Athenian sense. You could say that James Madison’s legacy still lives on, even though we can now legislate with the push of a button.”
Sarah: “Republics also didn’t have a great track record when it came to demagogues persecuting minorities.”
Dr. Taylor: “That’s right. Every big electoral fight that we’ve had as a country, including the Civil War, direct election of Senators, women’s suffrage, and ending Jim Crow, have all been about expanding access to power. This is direct democracy at its core, and our digital tools are simply the next evolution in that process.”
As the lecture finishes, Alex removes his headset, then takes a buzzing phone from his pocket to see an incoming call from his friend Mark.
“Hey man, happy birthday!” comes blaring from the speaker. “Have you voted yet?”
“Thanks, dude. Did it first thing. Meet me at the coffee shop and I’ll tell you all about it.” Alex grabs his keys and heads out the door.