Continuous Voting
This document is to serve as one of a series of thought experiments of how our world might be transformed from recent advances in technology. It should be made clear that this particular example relies on arguments that have yet to be settled with respect to the exact implementation of the technology to allow such trustless, secure voting which may be possible with some variant of blockchain. This paper does not attempt to convey which methodology is best suited for this particular application, nor that the ultimate technology underpinning the idea has even been invented.
Instead, we discuss what the implications may be given the eventual invention and widespread adoption of such methods and technology to inspire the reader to pursue such a world.
The Origination of the Problem
It is the authors’ view that the fundamental problem with American democracy lies in its discrete nature, as was architected within the US Constitution. Other problems may arise with democracy and capitalism, but the foundation on which they arise comes from the fact that we as a culture have only gotten a small taste of the democratic methods envisioned by the founders of the country.
In the late 1770s, the denizens of what is now the United States of America began to question the structure of their government. The issue first gained prominence over a series of disputes on taxes that were levied against the colonies. At the heart of the issue, was that a monarch – a single individual – imposed the rule of law over their subjects. A series of philosophers, economists, and well-educated land-owners proffered the notion that this lead to a misalignment of incentives. The desires of a single individual – who to make matters worse governed from several thousand miles and a several-month journey away – did not coincide with the desires of the colonists. They were not appropriately represented by their governing body.
This story is used to indoctrinate children into the way the American Government works, starting with arbitrary pieces of the tale (e.g. Paul Revere’s Ride) to students as young as five, often without much context. It is used to secure the virtue of our current system of rule of law, as the new system is clearly more effective than the original. No lesson, however, is usually given as to how the system might be improved; instead the current system is typically heralded as the only workable one. This is in direct contradiction to the aims of the founders of the current system, who explicitly built in mechanisms for which it could be adapted, known as “amendments”.
Though the colonists in an effort to compromise and unite the original, disparate states, fell short of the vision of returning all power to the people. The country’s founders sought to implement a form of government in which the people governed themselves. The structure imposed was that of elections. Citizens would engage in voting to elect a ruler, as opposed to one being assigned purely by heredity or lottery. Therefore, the people could be represented by a candidate that represented them who could be replaced by the next election cycle. Ballots were cast by paper, tallied by individuals, and therefore took place periodically: every six, four, two years depending on the role.
This was quite literally a revolution. Voting was a non-trivial exercise requiring travel to a polling station in an age where the fastest methodology was by horseback. It was unreasonable to hold elections any more frequently, or it would impinge on the economic prosperity of the nation; individuals would be less productive the more time was spent in transit!
Furthermore, the drumbeat of the march of progress was slower. Major technological changes spanned generations, not years and therefore there was less need to change course any more frequently than elections already occurred. This held true up until the very recent past, in which the application Moore’s law has resulted in our technology, and therefore culture, has begun to accelerate increasingly exponentially. In addition to the speed of progress, a more concerning problem arises when considering the breadth of issues. As each field of knowledge has become deeper and more specialized, the number of representatives has remained virtually constant – with small amendments due to population growth.
The Definition of the Problem
Herein lies the fundamental problems. Why should the same individual represent one’s point of view in fields as diverse as science, education, healthcare, military, and foreign policy when in today it is impossible to be a true expert across these multiple fields? This issue is compounded by the fact that the educational and professional background of the majority of these elected officials is law (or worse politics – the art of getting elected). These individuals have gamified the system at the expense of the very constituents they are meant to be representing.
This issue has become increasingly topical as the transparency of information grows, individuals are coming to terms with the fact that once again they are not being truly represented. Individuals wholly unqualified (democratic and republican alike!) to make decisions on fields requiring scientific expertise, cultural understanding, and technical proficiency, are being made by people who are lawyers that have never used a computer. How is someone who has never used the internet supposed to levy a national, potentially global, decision on net neutrality. Regardless of party affiliation, and skepticism about corporate interest and lobbying efforts aside, issues like this should be concerning from a standpoint of arriving at decisions that are in the best interests of the future of the governed.
We argue that the primary cause can be attributed to the discreteness of our current form of government. We pose a few questions to the reader to illustrate this discreteness of the current paradigm:
Why should the people not get to vote on each issue? Why can’t everyone get a say on every law that is up for review, especially if it concerns some citizens more than others?
Why must a voter elect one person to speak for them across the board when their domain of expertise may not exceed one or two fields max, but on average are well versed in exactly none of the topical issues requiring a decision?
Granularity of Decision Making: Today’s populous is constrained in terms of the granularity of decision making. One ballot is cast, or decision proxied, to too few individuals – e.g. a president, a senator, a congressman - at the federal level.
How does a voter choose between a limited subset of candidates who may have different views across a spectrum of fields of study?
Most depressingly - as seen in the recent election – information is often withheld. Many issues requiring attention were not discussed, leaving voters to form an opinion across viewpoints on non-issues such as abortion and immigration, which are non-critical to the success of the country. Where was the discussion on the death of modern cryptography resulting from quantum computing? Where was the discussion on the inevitable insolvency of the entitlement programs slated to run the country into bankruptcy without altering course?
Breadth of Choice: Too few candidates are meant to represent to wide a variety of issues. While this is made extreme by the two-party system, without sufficient depth to the pool of choices, suitable representation – an individual that represents a sufficient majority of a voter’s views – cannot be found.
Why do we only vote for a candidate every few years, when technological progress sometimes outpaces electoral cycles?
Years are an awfully long time to live with a decision with no ability to redirect one’s proxy for representation. The notion that a lame duck period exists – a period in which a governmental representative need not worry about backlash as there exists little to no means for them to be recalled – demonstrates the inefficiency caused by being allocate one’s representation too infrequently.
Illiquidity of Representation: Voting occurs too infrequently to be able to stay current with matching an individual’s views. Little to no recourse exists in order to recall/impeach a candidate in order to redirect one’s proxy to an individual whose views align.
The Capability Allowed by New Technologies
Blockchain allows for for trustless, consensus networks. We do not argue the validity of proof of work, proof of stake, or any other network securing protocol or algorithm – that is for the market to decide. Instead, the advent of these technologies inspires the conversation of what would be possible if voting could occur more efficiently via electronic, perfectly secure methods. Again, we do not suggest that such a method exists today – simply that the following would be possible if it did.
Imagine the ability to quickly create an election, provisioning access to only those who have a stake in the outcome, where the issues of voter fraud or access to the technology to vote are not considered but assumed to be nonexistent and sufficient respectively. Given that blockchain networks would be utilized, voting could be done instantaneously and securely, removing the need for travel to a polling station.
Let us examine each of the problems raised and how this technology might be leveraged to improve on the current paradigm:
Granularity of Decision Making
Voters would be able to vote on everything. Decisions on how tax payer money is allocated could be voted on by only those who pay taxes in a given region, state, or country. Decisions on climate would be voted on by everyone, as the earth is a single closed environment. No longer would you have to proxy your vote to anyone – every single decision that is currently made by congress could be delegated back to the people. A true democracy.
We concede that this is impractical. Given the number of choices to be made, one could easily spend all day voting which is clearly not ideal nor desirable by the voters. To remedy this, we come to our second issue…
Breadth of Choice
Voters should be able to select from the entire universe of candidates. Instead of electing a single individual to represent one’s interests across all domains, a voter could instead delegate their vote to an individual for a given issue, field, or across all issues (as exists in the status quo today – i.e. if you’re happy with the current system, you can keep it).
This is analogous to pooling. A voter can elect to vote on every issue themselves if they desire, or proxy their vote for given issues to any individual. Perhaps one particular voter who works at a Quantum computing lab wishes to vote on each piece of legislation regarding cryptography and internet security, but would prefer to assign their vote for all issues on education reform to a particular voter who has served twenty successful years on a local school board. Perhaps that same voter would want to lobby other voters to proxy their votes to them on issues of internet security, given their domain expertise.
This allows voters to reduce the burden of having to stay informed across issues, but can break down the selection of representation to multiple individuals who best represent their views across each individual domain. Successful proxies can be determined by intelligent conversation, or past successful decisions. Perhaps the ‘currency’ that determines a good representative could work in a similar fashion to karma.
Illiquidity of Representation
Given the above paradigm, a voter would then be able to switch their proxy at any point in time. If a voter can decide an individual no longer represents their interests for a given field, they can simply point their vote to an updated individual – whether that is a new proxy or back simply taking back the vote themselves.
This allows instantaneous, continuous representation and remedies the burden of removing a representative from office.
Conclusion
If we were to migrate to a digitally secure method of instantaneous voting, many of the issues of misrepresentation today might be resolved.
Voters would be able to specify their preferences more granularly resulting in decisions allocating preference more efficiently over the population.
Voters would be able to proxy their vote via the total universe of candidates to reduce the burden of deciding themselves but ensuring that their views are met more completely.
Voters could update their views in real time, instead of waiting what might be multiple years for a chance to change their minds.
In short, we should not have to live in a world constrained by the decisions made by those operating with less information and more primitive technology, especially considering our exalted forerunners so oft explicitly baked-in the means in which it could be updated. Dismissing any consideration of revision to a notion as critical as they way we are governed can be attributed to either apathy, or fear of change arising from those who stand to benefit from the inefficiencies currently baked into the system. In other words, a hypothetically more efficient form of government would have beneficial effects on society at large but may disrupt those standing to profit from the current inefficient infrastructure and lack of transparency which will always stand in the way of progress.
We believe it is time for a change.