Democracy Hack: Tokenized Voting Proposal

[legiteum]

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this idea...

Problem statement: modern society creates too many choices for voters. Many (most?) people don't even know the name of the candidates they vote for each election, and/or cannot possibly have enough information about the candidate choices to make an informed decision. This goes doubly true for referendum votes e.g. some specific area of law or government that people are asked to vote on. How many people know who is the best candidate for their local... water system commissioner? Probably very few. Many don't even know the name of their local federal House member (but they know the name of the presidential candidates, and/or the names and issues that impacts their area of expertise, work, hobby, etc.).

Today's elections give every citizen the same ballot, and everybody, regardless of their knowledge or interest, must vote on every candidate and every decision even when they don't have the first clue about what they are voting on. This also leads to "party line voting" because people know a party and not a candidate, which is bad.


I think this is a flaw in democracy, and with technology we can fix it.

My proposal is to give every citizens a limited number of "voting tokens", say 1,000 tokens per calendar year. (You could implement this with any sort of tokenization system e.g. a digital currency).

Then when they vote, they can "spend" their tokens using any combination of candidates/decisions they wish. The winner of the election is the one with the most tokens.

This way, citizens only vote on what they know about and/or care about, and they will not vote on things they don't know/care about.

I think this would vastly improve our democracy.

What do you think?

[Xylber]

From time to time there are proposal similar to yours, which I agree they are better than what we have right now.

The main problem is not which of our "alternative democracy system" is better, but how to apply them. Politicians around the world wouldn't like the idea to give the power back to the citizens and will not approve any of these ideas in the Congress.

[legiteum]

From time to time there are proposal similar to yours, which I agree they are better than what we have right now.

Really? I looked and I couldn't find anything like this. Do you have a link?

The main problem is not which of our "alternative democracy system" is better, but how to apply them. Politicians around the world wouldn't like the idea to give the power back to the citizens and will not approve any of these ideas in the Congress.

Why especially would this change things for Congress? You know it's a majority vote here in the USA, right?

[franky1]

use the search function of the forum.. many topics on a voting proposal.. total search time under 10 seconds


..
a voting system is possible... the main flaw is a trusted/reliable/secure method to give each individual a key/seed that cant be abused by them selling/giving their keys to others, so that the others then cant just batch vote for same proposal/candidate on masse

the 'one user one vote' is the flaw. not the blockchain system, but the distribution of keys/seeds

[legiteum]

use the search function of the forum.. many topics on a voting proposal.. total search time under 10 seconds

I did. Nobody has ever brought up the idea of actually changing how voting works, only using "blockchain" so make existing voting systems "more secure" somehow.

I'm proposing that we change the way democracy itself works here.

a voting system is possible... the main flaw is a trusted/reliable/secure method to give each individual a key/seed that cant be abused by them selling/giving their keys to others, so that the others then cant just batch vote for same proposal/candidate on masse

the 'one user one vote' is the flaw. not the blockchain system, but the distribution of keys/seeds

I agree. I am not talking about election security at all here.

As for citizens saving their votes, I would ask: why not? It's your vote, so therefore it should be your right to delegate that vote as you see fit.

Could a rich person simply "buy an election"? Maybe. But another rich person might bid higher. If all somebody's vote means to them is some temporary cash, then maybe that person isn't qualified determine how the country/state/locality should be run.

My core assumption here is: most people don't know what they are voting on most of the time. I really think that's true, especially for offices besides the President (for other federal offices they vote their party most of the time I suspect, and don't know anything else).

Another question this brings up is the idea of pooling your votes over a number of years. While this too seems very different at first, I think it's another great hack. Young people don't tend to vote as much because they don't care and/or don't have any clue as to how the things they are voting on will effect their own lives. Again, we don't want people like this deciding things.

So yes, let a young person pool their votes for the first 10 years of adulthood before they know what they are doing, and then spend them all at once on an election they really really care about.

Politicians would change the way they campaign because they could try to appeal to a population they think has a lot of stored up votes. I think this change the way our society works in very positive ways, because politicians would be elected because people really wanted them to be there, not because they didn't know what else to do.

[franky1]

lets go through some of the many summary responses of the other threads of similar topic

a. a voting blockchain does not need to be token/pre-mined coin based. it can just be signature based (proof of authenticity) thus no collecting/selling of coin and instead just a risk of selling privatekeys

b. it can also be multi vote based EG imagine you had a chance to decide how you want your taxes spent. where by out of 100% of treasury, you can score where you want your taxes to be delegated/allocated to:
healthcare 50%
security/safety 20%
education 20%
welfare 10%
and all votes get added up and thats then determined the law of that periods budget splits

c. due to how fast transactions can happen. yes you can vote for micro proposals each day/week instead of just one presidential election every 4 years. much like people vote for american idol several times a year.. though the issue still arises of things like whilst transactions are pending in mempool.. whomever decides what gets locked into a block (to be deemed a valid vote) can also decide to just ignore certain transactions thus control the vote, and when unconfirmed transactions are dropped from mempool its like some peoples vote never happened eg lost in the mail

[legiteum]

lets go through some of the many summary responses of the other threads of similar topic

Do you have any links to these threads? I looked and found nothing at all like this specific topic, only the technical mechanics of voting itself, which is not what I am talking about.

To be clear, what I am talking about doesn't necessarily need to be done with a digital currency system at all, it could just be a central government-run database, too.

[franky1]

again a 10 second search found many results.. of course there were many results of silly altcoins ICO announcements pretending to be votecoin systems, however actual discussions i found over 20 topics of meaningful discussion, with subsequent posts.. and separately many many posts not in topic of their thread but do mention details of a voting system using blockchain

however, to make it a learning experience for you.. ill just post you one of the earlier topics of the subject, and leave you to learn how to search

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=36807.0
it not linked to provide substance, but more so linked because it shows how far back people have been talking about the idea, and that the idea has been talked about

stop wasting a whole day waiting for someone to spoonfeed you things which you can search for in seconds
now dont reply to grumble that i am not helping you out by doing what you specifically asked, and realise no one owes you anything and the time you waste waiting for replies and then pressing reply yourself to grumble, is times wasted you could spend doing your own research... a lesson you need to learn

[legiteum]

again a 10 second search found many results..
[...]
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=36807.0

As I said (three times now), I am not talking about changing the systems themselves, but rather how democracy works. This is a side-forum here where serious academic subjects like this are discussed, so I thought it would be appropriate.

If you aren't interested in this subject, that's fine. Maybe others are...

[franky1]

there are many topics discussing that, at depth in some......

but if we were to try to take you serious, we can try.

so you propose a system where people are given 1000 tokens(vote power) a year where that vote power can be used singular per election over multiple elections or as a heap to power up one vote to be worth 1000votes in one election

EG if there was a local city police commissioner vote you do like, but you dont care about presidential elections, you can use all 1000 power on the local police commissioner to get to run the cities bully boys, but not vote on the next president nor education committee.

can you atleast see the many methods of manipulating elections this can result in.

your idea has fallen over before it begun, its like a 51% attack on a town of 2000 residents where the other residents only gave one vote each for the police election as they wanted to use their vote power on other elections

[legiteum]

can you atleast see the many methods of manipulating elections this can result in.

No, can you explain? What is wrong some citizens voting on one race, and other citizens voting on another one that they care about more?

Every citizen would still have the same exact voting power, so there would be no change in the power dynamic. This would just allow people to express their vote only on what they know about or care about.

Obviously people could use this system to vote exactly as they do now, equally spreading votes across all races for instance. But there would be no more "wasted votes" in this paradigm like there is now.

Yes, voters could be strategic about their votes, perhaps saving them for a certain election or candidate--but that's the whole point. If they did that, they would have no votes on anything else. In other words, the winner of the election is the candidate (or decision) that enough people deeply cared about that they sacrificed many other things they care about less.

It's also important to understand the downsides of today's elections, wherein our complex society gives voters an impossible number of options that no individual who had a daily job would ever keep track of. In today's society, probably 50% of people's votes are almost entirely uninformed--and probably 90% if you count party-line voting where people know nothing about the specific candidate. This gives enormous power to parties, and also makes money much more decisive.

For instance, take an election for the local water commissioner. Hardly any citizen would know this person's name, or know what they did. But a small constituency would know, and would know what is at stake for this position, e.g. the industrial use of the local water supply, pollution controls, etc.

In the current system, large monied interests could easy buy this election, because they could flood the airwaves with soundbite advertisements that skipped over any of the technical details of the decision (e.g. they could tar the opposing candidate with smears, or just insist that their candidate was for "better water" without any explanation).

In the tokenized election scenario, most citizens would not vote on this subject at all since they would have absolutely no idea what to vote on. However, a small number of citizens (and not industrial concerns or not outside money) would probably know a lot about the issues of this specific decision, and would vote on it accordingly. Yes, some citizens could be in line with the industrial concern, but there would likely be others who would be alive to the risks and vote against them. But the election in this case would be decided by a relatively small number of citizens which correctly mirrors the knowledge levels for once.

In this new system, the mantra is, "only vote on what you know, and don't waste your vote on something you don't".

[franky1]

you want me to explain even when i gave a good enough hint for you to then not reply for a while and instead use your own mind to think about..
oh well seems you still need spoon feeding, ok one last time, open wide here comes the chew chew train

lets use real money.. and departmental budgets

lets say each person has $1m and they can only use it towards anything election related

some people may want to only use $1k over 1000 different elections, big and small. to be part of every minuscule decision of local and national government. spending $1k each for everything from school district superintendent voting, police commissioners, city select committee's etc and then even the national stuff like who heads the SEC or whos a senator or governor and whos president

where as someone else might throw the entire $1m directly into hiring his buddy who is a local police chief candidate

where as someone else goes around neighbourhoods buying up peoples spare vote power 'cash' at cents to real normal spending dollars and accumulates billions of election bucks to then use to help certain buddy of theirs get elected on the national elections

now do you see the abuse potential..

..
also another hint for you to ponder on
many people debate that bitcoin mining is not fair as its no longer a 1cpu=1vote
whereby people can amass collectively the majority of blocks 'votes' in their favour leaving the smaller pools with less winning candidate blocks

..
ill leave you to take some time out to actually think and run some scenarios, dont just hit the reply button asking for more spoonfeeds

.
last hint about all the above if you took the time to think (final spoonfeed to save you wasting time)
if some police chief candidate knew he could get $millions of budget if he wins from just his buddies, he would then secure that with a loan for $millions of real money to then advertise his police policies and changes and get new voters be informed to vote for him.. thus slant the vote further in his favour even as a bad cop.. yet other residents who dont know much/care about policing nor know about the other police chief candidates and so they just dont vote at all, and boom bad cop becomes police chief

by removing fairness and logic rules of elections such as only a fair election if X population of town votes, to instead have it as a whomever gets the most cash wins where there is no limitation of how much each voter is allowed to vote.. abuse ensues

[legiteum]

[...]
now do you see the abuse potential?

I really don't. Every voter would have the same budget of votes. So yes, a voter might spend all of his votes on a "buddy", but that's their right as a citizen. All of what you are talking about here occurs in today's elections where people are forced to vote on every decision--it's called campaigning. It's not different if the candidate goes to neighborhoods to gather votes in the current system.

And perhaps you missed this nuance in my description, but I am talking about every voter getting the same amount of voting power--so it is in no way connected to how much money a voter has or doesn't have.

(By the way, is there some reason you have to be so extremely nasty and personal in every reply? This is the "Serious Discussion" forum after all...).

[franky1]

you dont take topics seriously, you simply want to come up with a random brainfart and hope people bow down and agree that your topic has merit and agree with you.

you dont take the time to think deeply about a topic nor run scenarios, you instead hope people agree with you and have them explain to you why things will work, you hate the idea that people disagree with you, yet serious discussions do actually involve different responses that may not agree with your stance.

this being a serious discussion category doesnt mean i have to be boyscout, ass kissing, agreeable. it means we should actually think deeper than a brain fart and actually discuss things at a deeper level using research and thought. something you lack and thus needs pointing out
and sometimes its as simple as saying this topic has been discussed at length already in many topics over more than a decade.. thus nothing more to say seriously

..
so again yes if everyone is given 1000 power unit means everyone has 1000 power units..
but.. unless you have a protocol rule that only limits one power unit per election, there will be abuses of use. as said multiple times if people can ignore certain elections and then use multiple units on one specific election, unfairness ensues, it can sway a election in favour of certain representative or proposal that may go against the overall community preference.

have you even thought of a way to prevent one individual collecting 1m vote power??
have you even thought of a way to prevent one individual with 1m vote power then using it on one candidate??

also as suggested in multiple other threads about voting..  better voting systems dont need to be currency unit/power unit based.. it can simply be proof of signature based so its a one key one vote based

all other threads about blockchain voting concepts only want to do a currency unit concept offering multiple units to be spread aimlessly over as many or as little elections.. are purely promoted as such to then have a secondary market to sell the units.. which then defeats the security, fairness and responsibility of elections. thus defeats its purpose of being a voting system and just becomes a crapcoin on some secondary market

[legiteum]

so again yes if everyone is given 1000 power unit means everyone has 1000 power units..
but.. unless you have a protocol rule that only limits one power unit per election, there will be abuses of use. as said multiple times if people can ignore certain elections and then use multiple units on one specific election, unfairness ensues, it can sway a election in favour of certain representative or proposal that may go against the overall community preference.

But why is that unfair? Every citizen gets the same exact amount of voting power. If they truly don't know about, or don't care about any of the issues or candidates of previous elections, then why should they be forced to give up their right as a citizen to participate?

All that said, the aspect of this idea wherein voting tokens rollover to the next election is an implementation detail, and the idea still works if for each ballot every voter could simply vote their allotted points on a single ballot.

have you even thought of a way to prevent one individual collecting 1m vote power??

have you even thought of a way to prevent one individual with 1m vote power then using it on one candidate??

Each individual would be allotted (say) 1000 voting tokens per year. So it would take 1000 years to do that.

Buying votes is illegal now (if Harris had won, Musk probably would have been prosecuted for what he did in the election for instance), and it would be illegal in this system too, so an individual could not sell their voting tokens to anybody else for instance.

And another straightforward limitation would be to put a cap on the number of tokens a citizen could spend on a single ballot, e.g. 2000 (two years worth) of tokens.