Democracy – Auxiliary Memory

How Could We Maximize Democracy?

by James Wallace Harris, 9/15/22

What if we had the perfect voting machine – how would it change politics?

What would make the perfect voting machine?

It would only allow one vote by each registered voter
It would block any illegal votes
It would block tampering
It would be trusted by all
It would make vote tallying easy
It would allow for easy recounts
It would be easy to use
It would be easy to access

Let’s imagine a perfect machine. Let’s imagine its impact like we were plotting a science fiction story about the future.

What if the government issued every registered voter a tablet that had limited internet access and could only be used for one function: voting. The tablet would be configured:

Fingerprint recognition
Faceprint recognition
Voiceprint recognition
Eyeprint recognition
Had a unique physical ID number in a chip
It will only work with the .gov domain

To register to vote and get one of these machines you’d have to prove your identity to the government. It would link your machine ID and identity to the voter registration system. It would register your encrypted biometric data. You will be given a voter registration card with your name and machine ID.

When you vote it would only accept one vote from your machine’s ID and only if your machine has validated your biometrics in four ways. This is far more secure than any online banking system or financial investment system. No one but yourself should be able to use this tablet. If it was stolen it would be useless.

Whenever a vote is taken the results should be tabulated nearly instantly and the results put online. Anyone could validate their vote by looking up their machine ID in the voting results. It’s not likely anyone will know this number unless you tell them. If you think your vote was changed you can register a protest.

This method would allow any individual to conduct a vote recount. The data file from a national election would be large, but probably smaller than a downloaded song. Voters could be given software that would allow them to drill into the data and analyze the results. Everyone should get the same totals. If needed, a vote could be retaken to validate the process. And countless checks can be added to the system to automatically look for fraud.

Right now we have a representative democracy. We vote for people we want to vote for us. With this system, we could vote directly. Our elective representative would prepare possible laws but everyone would vote on them. Of course, not everyone would vote on each issue, but the numbers would be huge. Far greater than any valid statistical sample. This would eliminate more forms of current corruption.

To make this system even more effective, we should set the winning majority higher than 50%. This could solve our current political polarization. We should aim to make more people happy with our government and laws. We should aim for a two-thirds majority or 66%.

That would push out the extremes of the political spectrum and create a purple party in the middle. Our representatives would have to work up laws based on compromises that would appeal to a wider majority.

Right now we’re getting minority rule and citizens are becoming unhappy. There’s talk of civil war. Extremists on the left and right want things that the majority of Americans don’t. Our political system is corrupted by political parties and their shenanigans. If we maximized democracy it would eliminate the need for political parties. Everyone would vote for their own unique platform. But to achieve a two-thirds majority would require voting with the aim of making the most people happy rather than just ourselves.

I doubt this will ever happen, but it’s a kind of science fictional speculation of how we could change things if we tried. Human nature pushes us to keep doing the same thing until everything breaks and we’re forced to start over. Some people are advocating starting over now, but that will only make even a smaller percentage of people happy.

If we had such a maximized voting system it would be important to elect politicians that tried to make the majority happy rather than just special interest groups.

JWH

Will Americans Ever Be United?

by James Wallace Harris, Wednesday, July 30, 2020

We might be the United States, but we’re hardly a united people. Hasn’t the melting pot of the world produced a particularly unhomogenized population?

If you pick any year in our history and study it, divisiveness is the norm. This has got me to wondering, are there topics of agreement that we mostly share?

For example, if we pass a law that means we want 100% of the people to abide by the law. Yet, a law can be passed by only a fraction of the population. Does it really make sense for 50% of the people to say how 100% of the people should act? But we’ll probably never get 100% agreement on anything. So, shouldn’t we think harder about what percentage of the vote equals a proper majority?

Would it be fair to require an 80% majority? That would still mean 20% of the population would oppose the law and would probably be unhappy. But it would also mean 80% of the population would be happy.

What we have is a happiness v. unhappiness ratio. Right now, we have a 50/50 ratio, which explains why our society is so polarized. Wouldn’t America be somewhat happier with a 60/40 ratio? And even happier with a 75/25 ratio?

We’re never going to have a 100% happy society. But shouldn’t we try to reduce the unhappy portion of the equation? My guess if we agreed to make 60% the required majority to win any vote, we’d see a shift in the contentment of the nation.

Ideally though, we’d eventually need to increase that to 75%, but right now that would be an impossibility. Just developing a 60% consensus would take a tremendous effort, mainly in learning how to make compromises.

Young vs. Old Voters

by James Wallace Harris, Saturday, July 13, 2019

I’m using statistics from Pew Research Center’s “An early look at the 2020 electorate.” I’ve graphed them so blue is older voters, light green the younger voters, and middle-age voters are dark green. There is a certain symmetry to this graph. I’m going to “borrow” a PEW graph that shows the change vectors of each generation.

It’s obvious that Baby Boomer and Silent generations are in decline, but if you look closer, Millennial and Gen X generations have already started their decline. You’d think the 2020 election should reflect a generation shift.

If you look at PEW’s other graph in that article,

you’ll see the shift that Republicans fear. Why do Republicans keep alienating minorities? Haven’t they even considered embracing diversity?

Finally, if we consider gender,

where we see that woman voters are also increasing.

I have no way to predict how the U.S. 2020 presidential election will go. There are too many factors. But if population demographics are good indicators, then youth, minorities, and women should play a bigger role. But are they a large enough factor for Democrats to shun running another old white guy? Which side of the graph should the Democrats bet on?

Trump won in 2016 by finding the right dissatisfaction in America. I think that same dissatisfied voting block still exists, but are they satisfied with Trump? Many independent voters voted for Obama and then Trump because they hoped for significant change. Should the Democrats pick someone promising to make big changes? What do younger voters – liberals, conservatives, independents – really want?

We never seem to know the deciding issue in a U.S. presidential election until after its over. The face-palm slap factor is always a black swan that surprises us. You’d think with all the artificial intelligence out there that data scientists could tell us ahead of time. But I doubt they will.

As of now, I’m going to bet that the 2020 election will be about youth. I’ve been reading articles lately about climate change depression. Young people are bummed out about the future, and who can blame them? I’m guessing they might be the reactionaries in the 2020 election. Maybe I feel this because I don’t want to see the young giving up on the future. Climate change isn’t the end of the world, but voters who don’t vote about the future could be.

JWH

Abortion and Democracy

by James Wallace Harris, Friday, May 31, 2019

[The above graph is borrowed without permission from this webpage.]

This essay is not about a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy but the impact of passing laws on abortion on our democracy. Right now, many states are passing restrictive laws limiting abortion or even trying to ban it outright. According to the latest Gallup polls, 29% of Americans want abortion legal under any circumstances, 50% legal under conditions, and 18% want abortion made illegal under all circumstances. That means 79% of the nation want women to have the right to choose to some degree, and 18% want to take that right away completely. It also means 68% of the country want to limit abortions in some way. And it also means 47% of the population occupy both extreme ends of the spectrum.

We’re living in times where politically active special interest groups can get laws changed, often against the majority’s will. Is that fair? Shouldn’t the laws in a democracy reflect the will of the majority?

We often teeter between extreme positions rather than compromises. Shouldn’t a law that demand absolutes be suspect? Having laws that demand no abortions under any conditions or laws that say abortions are legal under any conditions only make extremists happy. The same religious people who demand that there should be no exceptions to Thou Shalt Not Kill regarding abortions often make exceptions with the murder of adults – self-defense, war, capital punishment, law enforcement, etc. And if we asked the 29% of the population that believe abortion should always be legal about specific instances wouldn’t they make exceptions too?

It’s doubtful we can make laws that 100% of the population accept. But what percentage of the population should we aim to please to create a stable society? A simple majority leaves half the country unhappy. Even a two-thirds majority (66%) leaves one-third dissatisfied. A three-fourths majority (75%) to four-fifths majority (80%) should be our goal, but it’s doubtful Americans will ever agree that much.

I believe we should always work to have a minimum of a two-thirds majority. Right now, 68% of the population want some limits on abortion and 79% want women to have the right to choose. That suggests we could find a compromise that satisfies a large portion of the population.

Passing laws that only 29% or 18% want seems unethical, undemocratic, and oppressive.

Many believe that men should have no say whatsoever regarding abortion. But like I said, this essay isn’t about abortion, but democracy. Could we have voting by one gender only for a special issue, or restrict voting to a subset of the voters for unique voting situations? Should men have any say in women’s issues after hundreds of thousands of years of enslaving women? Or should democracy always be by all the people all the time?

The reason why we can have minority rule on certain legal issues is that special interest groups have played the representative political system to their advantage. It’s possible for millions to game the system when only dozens or hundreds pass the laws, even when those millions are a small minority of voters. I’m not sure that would be possible if we made decisions by referendums.

And even if we did decide by referendum, is a simple majority enough to maintain a stable democracy? I believe controversial laws should be based on a two-thirds rule. Although shouldn’t we really should strive for three-fourths compromises?

Is there a date after conception that 66-75% of the population would agree on where abortions could be restricted? We know that 18% percent of the population want conception as the cutoff. Ensoulment is a controversial issue, and religion and philosophers have been speculating about it since pre-history.

People who want the date of ensoulment to be at conception is base it on the idea that the soul exists, and there’s never been a shred of evidence that souls do exist, or that they come into existence at conception. This means a belief in a myth from ancient times by a small minority is being imposed on a much larger modern majority. Is that constitutional, democratic, or ethical? Our democracy is based on freedom of religion, but what happens when a religious belief demands that the entire population follows its beliefs?

The social conflict is between the rights of women to control both their bodies and their fate, and the freedom to hold religious beliefs. The extreme religious voters will not allow women to make their own moral decision as to when to have an abortion. This minority demands that 100% of the population follow their beliefs. This begs the question: When does a minority in a democracy have the right to decide for the majority?

Right now, because we have a representative democracy, an extremely tiny fraction of the population decides for the whole. We assume our political representatives are voting on laws based on what their constituents want. However, corruption has distorted representative democracy. Would a referendum system remove that corruption?

If the United States had a referendum on abortion how would it work? Up till now, referendums pass with a simple majority. But they often leave half the voters unhappy. Wouldn’t it be better to create referendums where we all try to find a compromise? Could we find a compromise on abortion that satisfies 66% of the voters, or even 75%? For example, would 75% of Americans agree on unlimited abortions for the first 12 weeks? (I’m not taking a position here, just an example.)

Too many voters are all or nothing with their opinions. Is it even possible to create a large consensus? Since the voters who want no abortions and the voters who want no restrictions on abortion are adamant and won’t compromise, and their totals equal 47%, that means there’s no way to reach a 66-75% compromise. Would some of them change their minds if they knew the 53% wanted a larger consensus? What if the laws of referendums demanded a two-thirds majority to pass a law? Are we to be held hostage by voters with extreme positions?

Representative democracy works well when our political leaders are wiser than the population. If you look at the history of our laws, it’s obvious on every issue the goalpost is always moving. We’re never satisfied with our final decisions. If we had a referendum democracy, we’d probably need to revote on laws periodically. Maybe once a decade, or generation. Could over time we learn how to compromise as a whole? To make group decisions that make a significant majority of voters satisfied.

Our current system has distilled into a political stalemate, resulting in a contentious polarized population. We need to work together to make each other happy. We need to let go of our extreme positions. We need to learn to compromise in the middle. There will always be extremists who think in black and white terms. We can’t let them rule us. I’m assuming 66-75% of the population aren’t extreme thinkers. That’s just a guess. If it’s true, we should find ways to work together.

JWH