Let's Fix How We Vote
Like most serial entrepreneurs, I usually have more ideas than I can act on. While you want the idea factory to continue to churn out raw material, you must have the discipline to stay focused on only the best ones so they can be scaled to make a difference. Most serial entrepreneurs also have had the experience of someone else acting on one of their long-held ideas before them. This has happened to me multiple times and it just did again with the announcement by the US Postal Service of a new patent it filed for, “A Blockchain-Based Secure-Voting System.” Sounds like someone at The US Post Office read my book. For those of you who have read my book Locally Grown; The Art of Sustainable Government, you will recall that Chapter 14 was dedicated to improving and securing how we vote using blockchain technology. Actually, I am gratified to see this because it validates that my ideas on the right track and this one will definitely help the country if it can be implemented. Hopefully, the private sector will build this since the Post Office is not, shall we say, the model of a well-run organization. As the patent application states:
"Voters generally wish to be able to vote for elected officials or on other issues in a manner that is convenient and secure," the application says. "Further, those holding elections wish to be able to ensure that election results have not been tampered with and that the results actually correspond to the votes that were cast. In some embodiments, a blockchain allows the tracking of the various types of necessary data in a way that is secure and allows others to easily confirm that data has not been altered."
Equally as interesting as the patent itself is the fact that the application was filed before the Coronavirus had wreaked total havoc on the country and long before the idea of mail in voting was being tossed around by pundits and the mainstream media. But long after my book was published in October 2019. Just sayin.
Twenty years ago, Oregon became the first state to go to universal mail-in balloting and they have been followed by Washington, Colorado, Utah, and Hawaii. This means they mail hard copy ballots to all registered voters. Since the start of COVID-19, lots of states have made it easier for voters to send in ballots by mail. California has a new law that requires every registered voter be mailed a ballot. New Jersey, Vermont, Nevada, Montana, and the District of Columbia have followed suit. Eight of these ten states are run by Democrats, with the exceptions being VT and UT.
Universal Mail-in ballots are different than Absentee Ballots. Universal Mail-in means sending everyone on the registered voters list a ballot. Absentee ballots must be formally requested by the voter and is the common practice for voters who will be out of state during an election.
Proponents of Universal Mail-in ballots are mostly the same folks who oppose Voter ID laws in the 34 states that have them. Their general argument is that any restrictions on voting are an attempt to disenfranchise voters, usually because of racist motivations. They point to the Jim Crow laws in the south that used methods like poll taxes and literacy tests to discourage black Americans from voting. Furthermore, they believe the incidence of actual proven voter fraud is quite small and would not be exacerbated by eliminating Voter ID or adopting Universal Mail-in ballots.
Opponents of Universal Mail-in ballots are mostly the same folks who support Voter ID laws. Their argument is that the Constitution mandates that only citizens can vote and that the states have the right to run elections as they see fit, as long as their election processes are Constitutional. They contend that registered voter lists are notoriously out of date either because either a voting district cannot honestly keep up or by design to ensure consolidation of power of one political party. They argue that elimination of voting integrity laws combined with 10 million illegal immigrants living in the country, many protected by sanctuary cities and states, creates an irresistible moral hazard for those inclined to use it.
So, what are the facts?
With regard to Universal Mail-in Ballots, we have a very recent, albeit small data sample to see. In New York’s June 23 primary, 21 percent of mail-in ballots in New York City were invalidated by the Board of Elections for arriving late, lacking a postmark, or a voter’s signature, 84,000 in all. 21 Percent is a staggering number. Proponents blame the US Post Office for botching the job, but evidence shows that the Post Office has been struggling for decades. They regularly run massive operating deficits and have accumulated over $78 billion in debt since 2007. This in the face in 33% reduction of the amount of mail they handle over the past 10 years.
Here’s another example of the risk. My brother-in-law John lives in Massachusetts which is a “universal mail-in ballot” state. He just received a ballot for himself and his 36 year old daughter who moved to Portland, OR three years ago. Dead people and move outs are on average 10% of the registered voters list. John is an honest guy who would never cast two ballots but what about those that aren’t so honest?
According to a recent IRS survey, about 10% of Americans think it’s OK to cheat on your taxes. Now I’m guessing that at least 10% of Americans would think it’s OK to cheat in an election especially since the penalties for tax cheating are more severe and more likely to be discovered. Given how close recent elections are, 10% is a HUGE number of potential voting fraudsters out there that could easily tilt many elections.
A 2012 Pew Research study, “Evidence That America’s Voter Registration System Needs an Upgrade”, shows that our voting systems are so antiquated in many areas of the country that we don’t have the capability to detect voter fraud reliably if we wanted to. The study also shows that the main ingredients for cooking up voter fraud, inaccurate voter rolls, is present in abundance. Federal law requires that municipal polling stations keep their voter rolls accurate, but many places can’t or won’t do this. Here are some of the disturbing low lights from the Pew study:
o One of every eight voter registrations in the United States, or 12.5%, are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.
o More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters.
o Approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.
o In Los Angeles County, there are 1.7 million more voters on file than there are citizens of voting age.
o More than 24 percent of eligible voters are not registered.
o In Oregon in 2008, taxpayers spent $4.11 per active voter to process registrations and maintain a voter list. In contrast, Canada, which uses modern technology to register people, spends less than $0.35 per voter to process registrations, and 93 percent of its eligible population is registered.
We witnessed what could have been an act of voter suppression in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election. Republican candidate Brian Kemp was also the secretary of state. He presided over the blocking of 53,000 voter registrations – 70% African American – because the name in the registration didn’t exactly match a public record in other state databases such as driver’s licenses. This means that if you have a hyphen missing in your name, or if you use “Joe” on one form and “Joseph” on another, your registration would be blocked by the state of Georgia. Although these citizens could still vote by showing up at the polling place with their ID, the letters informing them of the need to correct information seemed to confuse some into thinking this meant they were ineligible to vote at all. This matching process had long been legally approved by the state legislature but is still unfair. In a close election that Kemp won over Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams by 55,000 votes, this process could have had an impact. Georgia is a great state that must do better than this.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, there are only nine states that require a government-issued ID to vote. There are 25 states that request an ID but don’t require it, and 16 states where no document is required to vote. We require photo IDs for driver’s licenses, receiving government benefits, and checking into hotel rooms but the majority of states don’t require it for the most important function in a democracy. In an era where our country is so divided, many state and federal elections are close. Senate and House seats and even presidential elections can turn on a few hundred votes. In 2000, George W. Bush beat Al Gore by 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast. It doesn’t take much voter fraud to move the needle in US elections.
2018 Elections in Indian River County Florida (as taken from my book)
I always vote. I consider it a basic duty of every American. In my humble opinion, if you don’t vote, you forfeit your right to bitch about government. Being in the middle of writing a book on revitalizing our republic, I took the 2018 midterms elections a bit more seriously than the past.
So, here’s my take on the most recent process in Indian River Country, FL. One thing I noticed is that most of the workers were older than me and I’m not young anymore. I asked lots of questions, many of which were answered with a shrug. At my location there was a man wearing what looked like a bright orange road crew vest. He was an election observer. This is the first I’ve seen of this as I imagined them to be associated with corrupt third world countries. I asked the man in the jacket if there were folks like him at all the polling stations and he said, “No.” I had to present my driver’s license as ID, which was then scanned by the new election software that Indian River County had purchased just the previous year for $1 million. Again, I asked if you needed to present an ID at every polling station and the clerk answered, “No.”
After checking in with the election volunteers, I was ready to put pen to paper like tens of millions of my fellow citizens across the country. The first 20 percent of the 30 decisions I had to make were the high-profile candidates for Congress and executive state offices. I felt as though I was reasonably informed about each of those decisions given the amount of political advertisements I’d seen on TV, talking to others, and doing my own research. The next 15 percent were state legislature elections I knew less about but still knew enough information to make a reasonably informed decision. The remaining 15 percent on the front page were county and local positions with no party affiliation. There were two judges where the question was to retain them or not, so at least I knew they were incumbents. All the rest were just names. No delineation of party or incumbency.
The second page of my ballot included proposals to amend the state Constitution. These proved to be the most fascinating part of the ballot. I could use my experience to make a reasonably informed decision for each. What made some of the proposed amendments interesting is that they mashed up several different issues, some seemingly unrelated. For example, Amendment Nine was a prohibition of offshore drilling of gas and oil “bundled” with prohibition of vaping in enclosed indoor work spaces. What a combination!
These ballot question mashups were curated and delivered by the Florida Constitution Revision Commission, which convenes every 20 years. The last ballot with this number of amendment questions came in 1998, the last time the commission met. They chose 20 proposals from among the public input for this year’s ballot but decided to “group” distinct proposals together into eight amendments, meaning that in some cases voters must approve or reject multiple proposals in batches. This bundling technique has been used before and is controversial. Critics have charged that the way ideas were linked was politically motivated, to “log roll” less popular ideas so more favorable ones succeeded. But the chair of the commission’s Style and Drafting Committee argued that the groupings make it easier for voters to read and save time. I agree with him. Good politics is the art of compromise, something that is sorely missed in our country now.
There are some things to like about this approach from a Locally Grown Government point of view. First, it was an effort to simplify things for voters. Second, it seemed like a negotiated solution by both Democrat and Republican appointees of the commission. Third, the idea of a regularly scheduled commission to collect and curate ideas to amend the state constitution is in keeping with our belief of the continuous improvement model to achieve sustainability.
As has become usual recently in Florida, two marquee races were extremely close. The race for US Senate between an 18-year incumbent and the former Florida governor had the challenger winning on election night by approximately 57,000 votes, about a 0.5 percent margin. This narrow margin automatically triggered a recount. Three days after the election in Broward County, which mysteriously hadn’t finished counting early voting as required by statute, the winning spread had narrowed to only 15,000 votes. Election officials in Broward were releasing extra votes in overnight hours while refusing to disclose how many ballots were remaining. Broward County became infamous for the “hanging chads” controversy in the 2000 recount of the Bush vs. Gore presidential election. The official overseeing the election process in Broward County is a woman named Brenda Snipes, whom the state courts ruled had destroyed ballots in 2016. Snipes was being sued for failure to disclose required information like how many people voted, how many ballots had been counted, and how many remained to be counted. A Broward County judge again ruled against Ms. Snipes for failure to disclose, which underscores the illegality of her actions. In January 2019, Ms. Snipes retired with a life-long government pension of over $130,000 per year for her time as a schoolteacher and election supervisor.
So here I am, writing a book about revitalizing the American political system starting at the local level, and I am ill-prepared to cast an informed vote for a chunk of the people running for office. I can only imagine what the vast majority of people who aren’t political junkies are doing. Surely, we can design a better way to inform voters, both at the ballot box and prior to elections, about who and what is on the ballot. We live in a country where social media and digital life was invented. I’m sure many would say “as a citizen it’s your responsibility to dig for information” and they would be correct. Still, as a simplification junky and technology guy, I know that we can do better without compromising the process or disenfranchising any citizens.
Whether for president of the US or town council or as a shareholder in a corporation, voting is what makes an organization work. And it is critical that citizens trust the integrity of their elections. It’s sad to see how voting is regularly corrupted in developing countries where blatant election rigging is often the rule, not the exception. In the United States, we have largely avoided this outcome, although over the last two decades federal elections seem to have regularly become much closer and more contested. This makes the stakes much higher for getting it right. We all remember the 2000 election between Bush and Gore. The entire election came down to Florida recounts for president that ultimately went to the Supreme Court, which had to decide on the meaning of “hanging chad.” Still we accept the results of an election even if we don’t like it. That’s what enables orderly transitions of delegated power. However, as I discussed earlier in my description of the 2018 midterms, there seems to be no standard procedure from one polling station to another and from one state to another. That level of inconsistency simply invites the possibility for corruption in the process, especially as votes get closer and the stakes higher in a divided country already losing trust in its institutions. We must be better than this.
It’s apparent to me how rickety our current voting process is, and there are some interesting voting platforms out there that could help with this. But the change we seek isn’t just about how we vote. It’s about the power of local government supplanting and optimizing a chunk of what the federal government does now. That’s a big, hairy, audacious goal that requires serious infrastructure. This means the Locally Grown Government architecture must be flexible enough to grow beyond voting into the other critical government functions like registry of deeds, business licensing, inspections, healthcare, and welfare management. This local infrastructure should also easily connect both laterally (with other municipal governments) and upwards (county, state, and federal). It should be open source and transparent to use. And most importantly, it should be designed to increase inherent power rather than centralized power.
Locally Grown Elections
We now have the means to guarantee fair and incorruptible elections and we see both the public and private sector working towards solutions. There are an increasing number of companies focused on developing a new class of election software to address the shortcomings of our current voting system. New technology can reliably authenticate voter ID with biometrics (e.g., fingerprints, retina scans) that tie back to other government data records during the voter registration process. This means no more debacles like 2018 in Georgia and Florida. Thankfully, there are those at the federal level that are already leading the charge like the US Election Assistance Commission. They recently announced that Votem would participate in its voting system testing and certification program. Votem is partnered with the Blockchain Research Institute and the National Association of Secretaries of State and already testing its election software platform with state and local jurisdictions around the country.
Then there is the nonprofit Democracy Earth Foundation, which focuses on the “liquid democracy” paradigm where a person can delegate their vote on certain issues to a trusted person, much like proxy voting in corporate shareholder elections. This approach permits citizens to delegate a friend who is educated and passionate about climate change to vote on those relevant issues on your behalf. Now this wouldn’t pass constitutional muster for federal and some state elections but there is nothing preventing their use in local elections and private organizations. Liquid democracy would be a narrow delegation of the inherent power of the individual that is informed and discretionary for that individual.
Other companies like Clear Ballot, Smartmatic, and Intelivote are successfully deploying modern voting platform technology in many locations around the globe. Some more recent entrants like Democracy Now, Agora, and Votem are on the blockchain and I’ll reference some of their features and framework to further describe our vision of secure voting. And of course, let’s not forget the latest entrant, the US Post Office with its blockchain voting patent application
Delegative Democracy
The concept of “delegative democracy” (also known as liquid democracy) goes as far back as Lewis Carroll of Alice in Wonderland fame. He wrote about political candidates being able to delegate their votes to others running for Parliament. In the decades following, several others like William U’Ren, Gordon Tulloch, and James Miller built on the idea of a more representative voting process where citizens could delegate their votes to others who would elect politicians directly without a political intermediary.
In 2002, Professor Bryan Ford, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, authored a paper called “Delegative Democracy,” which improved these ideas into a structure that could actually be implemented. [ii] We see seedlings of this approach being implemented now with some of the blockchain voting startups with the “ranked choice” voting movement. Our current system of representative democracy laid out in the Constitution defines how citizens vote to delegate some of their inherent power to elected representatives. These delegates are paid to represent our interests in local, state, and federal government. This form of government is vastly more practical than “direct democracy” where all citizens vote on every issue directly. Who has the dedication, time, and knowledge to make informed choices on all the issues facing our society? As Dr. Ford explains it, pure democracy is neither feasible nor desirable because there is such a “wide variance of knowledge, interests and abilities” in a society, that if each citizen has the exact same influence (i.e., one person, one vote), then the wisdom of the group may be no better than the average wisdom of the citizenry. He says the results can actually be worse than average because the random “aggregation of multiple sensible but conflicting policies can easily result in a completely nonsensical collective policy.”
According to Dr. Ford, there are still key defects in the American form of representative democracy, including the size and the geographical limitations of the representative bodies. Too small and the threat of concentration of power and corruption looms. Too large and there are too many cooks in the kitchen following the recipe of gridlock. In the US, we have 435 congressional districts and 100 senators and one president and one vice president for a total of 537 federally elected officials. This works out to about 609,000 people per representative. It is impossible for each of the federal reps to have met, much less personally know, any but a fraction of their constituents so our system relies on the public media to inform citizens of at least who they are and what they stand for. Dr Ford describes the key features of delegative democracy as voter choice of delegates being as “broad and unrestricted and based on a personal trust relationship.” I’m guessing he wouldn’t agree that 537 federal officials representing 327 million people meets that standard, but that is our current constitutional constraint, at least at the federal level.
But what would the “citizen-representative” ratio look like if we included all the elected officials at every level of government? The only trusted source I could find on the topic was a 1992 report by the US Census, stating there are about 513,000 elected officials in every dimension of government from president to state governors to local school committee, with the vast majority being local reps. [iii] Adding these people to the mix yields a ratio of 637 citizens per rep and a much higher probability of personal relationships existing between the people and their delegates. Pretty good, but what if we further extended our pool of potential delegates to include government workers? These folks are typically full-time employees, paid by tax dollars and theoretically knowledgeable about their domain of control. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2018 there were 22,700,000 federal, state, and local employees. [iv] This yields a ratio of 14.3 people per rep, suggesting there’s a high degree of probability that you will know or have met one at least one of these people. This isn’t to suggest that in a delegative or liquid democracy, the pool of delegates should be limited to only those currently employed by the government. Every citizen should have the right to become a delegate. I think the idea of a delegative democracy aligns well with Locally Grown Government principles starting with the fact that it represents true “bottom-up” governance. It provides the maximum degree of inherent power without unduly burdening citizens who are either unable or unwilling to wade through the details of governance.
An important constraint of delegative democracy is that it be constitutionally bounded. I am not trying to upend 243 years of successful self-governance with something completely new, but rather provide infrastructure that increases citizen participation and therefore their inherent power. Therefore, a US citizen cannot delegate someone else to cast their vote in federal elections and probably most state elections. However, I see no reason why liquid democracy cannot be deployed in most local elections. That said, a new voting platform can at least use a polling and survey tool to provide much better guidance to federal and state elected officials and candidates. By having incorruptible detailed analytics hosted on the blockchain, of who supports what and providing access to political campaigns and office holders, we have the tools to create a more responsive democracy. Each voter will know exactly how their delegates voted and, as the ecosystem self-organizes, the politicians will seek out powerful delegates and influencers to get their input.
This basic construct is already in place with our federal Electoral College, which consists of 538 electors with a majority of 270 electoral votes being required to elect the president. A state’s allotment of electors equals the number of members in its Congressional delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives plus two for the senators. The total number of electoral seats are apportioned using Census data, and the individuals are chosen by the political parties according to those state or party rules. By the way, you can see here how loose immigration policy directly affects our republic as Electoral College delegates in each state are apportioned using Census data, which counts people living here illegally.
Each party chooses its slate of electors either by citizen vote or the party central committee and the candidates. Whichever party’s candidate wins the popular vote in a presidential election, the number of electors for that party in that state typically cast their votes in line with the popular vote, though they are not bound by the Constitution to do so. It is very rare that electors don’t vote in line with the popular vote.
The Electoral College was a brilliant mechanism added to the Constitution precisely to “slow down” democracy. Yet some are agitating for eliminating it. This is a horrible idea. First, it would require repealing and replacing the 12th Amendment because we are a representative republic, not a pure democracy. Second, getting rid of the Electoral College would shift power to a few large population states and large urban areas and by inference to the wealthy influencers in those areas. Candidates would never visit Wyoming or North Dakota because there just aren’t many people there.
It’s worth remembering that in 1860, an Electoral College majority elected Abraham Lincoln out of four candidates, none of whom had a majority of the popular vote. I think without the Electoral College, there would have been a high likelihood that the South would have seceded from the Union and slavery might have persisted for decades longer. Eliminating the Electoral College is simply a crazy idea espoused by people with an interest in further centralizing power and reducing freedom, and I would hope voters reject this idea.
Since there are no constitutional requirements for how electors are chosen and there is a patchwork of different processes across the nation, Locally Grown Government could provide the perfect opportunity to standardize this process for choosing electors and make it more transparent and accountable to the people. Even though each citizen would still need to cast their vote directly for candidates, they could vote for electors, and in that way Locally Grown Government makes an impact at the federal level.
Another important way we can improve our current system is by creating better informed citizens. I discussed earlier my shameful lack of awareness of several of the candidates in the 2018 midterm elections. Armed with the data on how every delegate voted on every issue and the actual election ballot a few months in advance (candidates and referenda), we can deploy artificial intelligence to cull the candidates that match the profile of each voter. Voters can get a mock ballot sent to them via email about how their votes on each office and ballot position is optimally matched to their unique desires and beliefs. Voters can review this information, do a bit more research on their own, including reaching out to their delegates, and finalize their choices before they walk into the voting booth. Imagine that. Active, informed citizens at the touch of a button!
Smart Contracts
Labor unions, civic organizations, corporations, private clubs, and religious organizations are all part of the fabric of society just like government. Like governments with their constitutions and body of laws, private organizations have bylaws that govern how they operate. In the blockchain world, these rules of the road are called smart contracts. Instead of words on paper they are built from computer code. In running a business or government, there is a hierarchy of interrelated rules that govern transactions like buying and selling a product, paying employees, registering a real estate deed, and collecting property taxes. Smart contracts have two or more parties in a transaction, and when each party satisfies the terms of the contract, the transaction is automatically executed across the decentralized blockchain network, anonymously, securely, and without the need for a central authority, legal system, or external enforcement mechanism. A copy of this transaction now exists on hundreds or thousands of computer servers in the network, and they are traceable, transparent, and irreversible. Encryption and the distributed nature of the transaction make it next to impossible for nefarious actors to mess with it. It’s way more secure than your credit card data that’s stored and regularly hacked across all the e-commerce sites you buy things at.
Here’s our list of what our a voting Smart Contract might include:
Require Proof of Identity (POI).
Have a method of re-verifying a POI over time.
Establish conditions for invalidating a verified identity (e.g., identity fraud).
Establish voting rules (e.g., rank choice, one vote per issue, delegate voting).
Have a method of allocating voting tokens to each verified citizen; the tokens could even be worth money as they could be bought and sold on cryptocurrency exchanges that are available now.
Determine which citizens are allowed to participate in the system (e.g., all citizens, only certain delegates on certain issues).
Outline codes of conduct and rules for banning citizen participation for a period of time and rules to expel citizens from the Locally Grown voting system entirely.
Outline criteria to amend the Smart Contract (e.g., a two-thirds majority of all verified citizens).
Locally Grown Example: Smallville, FL
Smallville is a quiet, fictious city of 25,000 residents on the east coast of Florida. It is part of Manatee County. The county installed the Locally Grown Government blockchain software platform to handle its elections and other functions like deed registration and tax collection. Dennis is a full-time resident of Smallville, and he just received a letter sent to all residents from the county supervisor of elections explaining some of the new features of the election and survey functionality of the newly installed system. He loves the super-strong security aspect of the system and the fact that he will be able to receive emails and text messages from various county offices instead of snail mail. The letter says the new voter registration requires a one-time visit to the county offices for Proof of Identification, where he will simply present his driver’s license, passport, or other government-issued ID. The county does a biometric scan of his fingerprints, and when he shows up at the polling station to vote, he just does a thumb scan. He can still register online prior to elections just like he does now, just more securely.
Dennis really likes the feature where he can view online reports in advance of elections showing all the candidates, their party affiliation, incumbency, positions, and votes on key issues, and how much campaign money they’ve raised. He also gets to see some ballot questions in advance and blogs linked to them so he can learn more before he votes.
But the new survey tool and vote delegation process is really what’s fascinating. For elections of local officials, he can choose to vote directly for each official like he does now, or he can delegate someone else he trusts with more knowledge on a ballot question or slate of candidates to cast votes for him. And all of this can be done securely in his regular polling center where he reviews his electronic ballot in the voting booth or online. If he chooses to delegate on a particular local candidate or ballot question, he simply begins typing the name of his delegate into the text box next to the candidate or question, and the system works like a web browser type-ahead search to narrow results as he types. Once Dennis finds the right delegate, he chooses them. Of course, he can also cast his vote directly just as he does now. Behind the scenes, the system aggregates Dennis’ and others’ delegations and records votes on his behalf, according to how his delegate votes. When he is done voting, the system gives him a printed copy of his ballot, and when the election is complete, he can log in to his online account and see his full ballot, including what his delegates voted for on his behalf. He can print this or save a copy to his computer if he wants. The election officials also get a printed copy of Dennis’ ballot, which provides an important audit trail.
Dennis was excited and decided to organize a lunch with his friends who also lived in the county to discuss this new election system. Sally, one of his friends expressed some reservation with the vote delegation process, worrying that the 40 percent of residents in the county who don’t normally vote might be susceptible to being paid by delegates and candidates for their votes. Dennis and his friends initially thought this would be a bad thing until his friend Kalie piped up and said that the only way that would work is if the people who don’t normally vote actually go to the polls and vote. They would then have to go through the process of delegating. Wouldn’t it be a good thing to get people to the polls who didn’t normally vote, even if somebody paid them a little?
At this point, Dennis could see the lightbulbs going on in the heads of the lunch crew. Jen spoke up, saying that buying votes has been around since there were elections. Don’t some politicians buy votes by promising things for their constituents and supporters? It’s not as overt, but wasn’t it the same thing? Paolo added that he remembered his father’s stories about local ward bosses knocking on doors in the neighborhood and handing out cash for those who got to the polls. Everyone agreed that delegation could provide great benefits by outsourcing certain votes to trusted people with more expertise in a particular area. By the time dessert and coffee rolled around, the group agreed that the benefits of vote delegation appeared to outweigh the risks and that they would reconvene the newly coined Smallville “Lunch Club” to further discuss this intriguing new form of governance.
A couple days later, the Lunch Club was back at it at the Wagon Wheel Cafe. Dennis started things off by saying how much he liked the idea of online surveys, which could be a way to provide real-time visibility for elected officials of the public sentiment on big issues. Dennis was concerned that a new shopping mall proposal to build on swamp land might have negative environmental impact, but he also wanted the new jobs it would bring to the county. He said he would prefer to outsource decisions like this to his friends: Joe, who was a civil engineer, and Sally, who was a real estate broker. The conversation turned to how people would delegate votes on surveys and elections. Of course, all state and federal elections were limited to the traditional “one person-vote” method, but this new option was viewed as a great way to get more efficient responsive government.
That evening after the Lunch Club meeting, Dennis started mapping out how he would delegate his future voting on some issues and candidates. The rest of the group resolved to do the same and bring their “delegation maps” to the next meeting. Dennis got information on a regular basis, like news feeds, to inform him on the issues he cares about. For example, Dennis decided to delegate certain decisions on climate change to Jen and all other issues equally between Joe and Sally, who both delegated their proxies to Emma. Dennis delegated any votes on education like local school committee to Kalie and Jen, while any state-level issues went to Paolo and federal-level issues like local HUD funding to Sally. He could choose to retain voting on any of these issues himself as well. Of course, Dennis could not delegate his right to vote for official elected representatives, which he did himself. That didn’t preclude Dennis from using the Locally Grown Government survey capabilities to poll his network for insight into the local, state, and federal candidates. The beauty is that Dennis got information from, and delegates proxy voting to, a network of people he knew and trusted. Table 34 illustrates his delegation map:
Locally Grown Election Platform Vote Delegation
During the lunch the following week, Dennis’ friend David presented the group with some research on the new system and found that there was an option to deploy this feature called blockchain tokens that could be used to compensate citizens who participate in the county’s democratic process. This included participating in surveys, voting, volunteering, or anything the county residents believed was helpful to the common good. It took a little while for David to explain how blockchain tokens worked, but at the end of the day, the group understood that the tokens could be used to pay for property taxes and county fees, so they were worth real money. The county had not chosen to deploy this feature yet, but the group resolved to create an open “issue” on the system to create awareness among residents and garner support through the survey and polling feature, with the ultimate goal of an official county vote on deployment of tokens. After hearing this, the group was buzzing. Separate animated conversations broke out, like crossfire at the OK Corral. If the waitress were listening, she would have heard things like “think of the possibilities,” “imagine how this could unlock volunteering,” “we can change education in the county.” After 10 minutes of group scrum, David whistled the group to reconvene so he could present a chart diagramming how this new system worked. Table 35 is a rendition of David’s chart.
Locally Grown Election Platform Flowchart
I am sure after reading my little story, you have tons of questions. My goal is not to design a system that considers every potential use case, but rather to provide enough detail to spark your imagination of what is possible. All human accomplishments start with ideas, and I have thrown one on the table for everyone to consider. My hope is to make an election system like this a reality and welcome any of you who are interested in learning more about this to contact me. Maybe you can start your own “Lunch Club” with trusted friends to explore the possibilities!
Why is this Important now?
So why have I spent this time talking about the boring details about how we vote ? As is the case with several topics in my book, voting is proving to be an issue that is front and center in our politics right now. Our country is divided, and elections are close. The difference between winning and losing a Presidential election often comes down to a few votes in a relatively few counties. Of the more than 120 million votes cast in the 2016 election, 107,000 votes in three states effectively decided the election. Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania account for 46 electoral votes. Trump won PA by 68,236 votes, WI by 27,256 votes, and MI by 11,837 votes. Those 107,000 people represented 0.09 percent of all votes cast in the election. This was only the fourth time a President was elected without winning the popular vote.
Both the electoral college and the US Senate were created by the founders precisely to prevent the tyranny of a few densely populate states from dominating the government. The map below illustrates this point well. As you can see, Donald Trump won about 80% of the land mass in the United States despite losing the popular vote. The 2020 electoral map is likely to look pretty similar to 2016 regardless of who takes the White House.
This image of blue islands in a sea of red illustrates why the concept of Locally Grown Government is so important. The vast red territory is less concerned about federal government because they are largely governing themselves. Most of the blue islands depend on a large federal government for their very existence. Blue cities and states are practically demanding that the federal government bail out their broken fiscal systems without changing the policies that put them in a bad position in the first place. Depending on how the November elections go, fiscally responsible states will be bailing our fiscally irresponsible states. This isn’t an event that is likely to unite our country.
I hear Hillary Clinton say that "Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances”, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi seems to be rooting for election turmoil to last until January 20, 2021, after which she could be appointed President by the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, President Trump seems to be trying to influence policy at the USPS by removing mailboxes and other actions that would disrupt the delivery of a flood of mail-in ballots. Both sides have already hired legions of lawyers to challenge the results in the key swing states. I get very worried that we are staring at a full-blown constitutional crisis in November if the election is close.
This scares the hell out of me, and it should scare you too. We already see violent civil unrest exploding in our cities and this will only be exacerbated by contested national elections. There is much at stake. Hopefully, I have made the case why we should be very concerned about our election process. We can easily solve the problems so that citizens can trust the voting results. If we can trust the election results, we can accept our leaders, even if we don’t agree with them. As citizens, we have to DEMAND this change, otherwise the powerful few will continue to rig the system for their own benefit.