Why hasn’t the internet transformed our democracy and governance the way it has transformed every other transactional activity in modern society?
This riddle has been addressed in academic circles for years now (e.g. Rick Pildes, Bob Bauer, Thomas Carothers). The answer in all cases is multi-faceted and complex — which seems reasonable, because the issue appears very complicated.
This writer contends there is an out-of-the-box perspective that everyone has missed. One of the simplest possible answers is: the internet hasn’t transformed democracy because the right application hasn’t been created.
This essay Open Source Democracy 2.0 describes, and demonstrates at a beta website, an innovative voting application that offers a practical solution to the problem of partisan politics in democratic governance. This application empowers democratic majorities by allowing them to commit their vote in future elections to candidates who support specific issues. As innocuous as this proposed Future No Vote (FNV) application may seem at first, in practice it can bring any democracy (not just the US) into the age of the internet.
This new voting platform doesn’t compete with established political parties as much as render them irrelevant. Following a classic internet disruption pattern, the FNV application dis-intermediates the democracy marketplace by bypassing middlemen (political parties) and giving consumers (voters) direct access to their elected representatives.
The FNV app is versatile and scalable. It empowers majorities at the local, state and national levels, and overlays existing democratic institutions without requiring any change in, or authorization from, such institutions.
Neal Rechtman
October 2023
Christ Church, Barbados