February 18, 2012

There’s no democracy in Maine this year.  Voters from Hancock and Washington counties have been reported (by Fox News, actually) as being “not counted.”  Some polling stations were closed, due to a phantom snowstorm that never materialized.  There’s an easy way around all of this – we just need to do it.

Maine in February of 2012 is a sad example of a large underlying problem, everywhere in America, and all through our history: in-person elections are inherently flawed, and we need to get our elections online.

Sure, there will be challenges, but those hurdles are going to be much easier to overcome than the catastrophic, corruptable, logistics nightmare of holding an in-person election.

I’m from Oregon, where it’s 100% vote by mail.  Maybe that makes me more predisposed to support a system where it evolves even further – vote by internet.  People should have a choice of how they vote.  Right now, few have any choice in how they vote.

The presidential primary system in the United States disenfranchises voters

It’s not democracy; it’s an insult to democracy, because it claims to be democracy.

With the internet, we can have a pure democracy.  Truly one person, one vote.  We hold the election at the same time, and people can log in and vote. Don’t trust anyone who tells you it’s more complicated than that (beyond the minor minor details of running a high-traffic website).

If everything is transparent, then everyone gets to see their own vote go up and join the total number.  If they can verify that their vote changed the total number, and for the candidate intended, then it’s philosophically unhackable.  

A hack would either be as irrelevant as graffiti on a sidewalk, or it would change the outcome of real people’s votes, and if it changed people’s votes, those voters would notice the change and report it – transparency is the only key.

If, and only if, transparency, then democracy.

Apply pressure to the wound

The political parties aren’t even written into the constitution.  They just kind of, like, happened.  There really is no logic behind the other side, and that’s why those with the logic on their side need to apply pressure.

Because we have two parties, they create an axis.  That’s what it’s called in math, and that’s what I’m calling it here.  It’s a one-dimensional axis, and it measures all of reality relative only to the differences between the two parties.  It’s very limiting to try to define all of political reality by one dimension.  This axial paradigm is a wound on our society, and we need to apply pressure on that wound.

This is my full philosophy on the US presidential primary elections.

Let’s usher in a new era of real democracy.