Democracy Through Technology
from the information-is-key dept
BeltwayOutsider writes in with a link to an MIT Tech Review story about a guy who, just as an exercise, created various potential scenarios to increase the information a voter is aware of before voting in an election. We're not talking about electronic voting here, but changing some of the fundamental methods of deciding who votes and how they vote. None of these plans is a "recommendation", but, rather are designed to get people thinking beyond what they may have considered before. People seem to get angry about his ideas, but I'm not sure why. It actually wouldn't surprise me if his first scenario came true - though, it would be an indication of how intellectually lazy some of us had become. It's based on a little agent that would monitor what you do and say online and then look at the various candidates and proposals and suggest who and what you should vote for. Obviously, people would have huge problems with machines determining who you should vote for, but it is intriguing to wonder if this would lead to elections that more accurately reflect what the public really wants. Other scenarios are designed to push more information into the hands of voters - and perhaps reward them for understanding the issues. One would give voters extra votes if they first prove they understand an issue, while another would force the person to prove that a certain issue actually impacted them by proving they had visited the location that the vote was about. The last idea isn't a bad one as well - and I'm sure that some websites probably already try to do this. It's "post vote tracking", where you would be informed of the results of your vote, and whether or not the politician you voted for kept his or her promises. Definitely some interesting ideas to think about.
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