People all over the world are explicitly expressing their opinions in publicly-visible ways, particularly online. Some of those opinions are prose, like blog entries, emails, and the like. Some of those opinions are based on polls, be they online like polls on CNN.com, or be they offline, such as phoning in votes on American Idol. Some are more structured, like eBay feedback, or Amazon.com's ratings-with-comments. Some are even "meta", providing opinions about opinions, such as Amazon.com's rating the relevancy of comments and discussions those comments spawn.
Online, you can rate products; lawyers, doctors, and other service professionals; movies, songs, and other forms of entertainment;...and the list goes on and on.
Does anyone really think this will never be applied to public officials and the political process?
This change is inevitable: citizens of democracies will use online tools to voice their opinions of what is going on in their neighborhood, their nation, or the world.
In fact, the U.S. Presidential campaign of 2006-2008 has demonstrated any number of new tools for rank-and-file citizens to engage with the campaigns, such as:
- Joining Facebook groups, whether they be for a candidate (e.g., One Million Strong for Barack) or against (e.g., One Million Strong Against Hillary)
- Recording questions and uploading them to YouTube for use in televised debates
- Using Eventful to ask a candidate to make a campaign stop in your area, such as John Edwards visiting Columbus, Kentucky based on a "Demand and Be Heard" promotion
- Twittering your thoughts on debates and election results in real time
- Spreading your message via online media, such as Ron Paul's advocates raising awareness of their candidate through innumerable online outlets
Of course, most of these are strictly aimed at the Presidential race. However, the same concepts could be applied for other political campaigns, or even ongoing policy discussions. Somebody, somewhere is going to create the "killer app" that will allow citizens to become more engaged with their governments. That "killer app" could easily become as widespread as MySpace, Facebook, and the other social networks — not in the least because it might be embedded within those social networks.
The question isn't whether something like this will come about, or when will come about, or even what it will look like.
The question is: what should it look like?
In other words, will the "killer app" for citizen involvement reflect citizens' rights and responsibilities in a democracy? Will it offer citizens a rich set of ways to express their opinions, or will it be restricted like traditional Election Day voting systems? Will it offer the openness and transparency necessary for everybody to feel comfortable that the results aren't being rigged? Will it just be an idea that, as much as anything else, is designed to make the founders (and their investors) rich, or to increase the power of some existing entrenched authority?
I do not claim to have definitive answers to these questions — after all, I'm just one guy. I do believe it is better to raise the questions and offer up a candidate set of answers, to spark a debate, than it is to ignore the situation and "let the chips fall as they may".
If there is an overarching theme to what I think we need, that theme is trust:
- Citizens need to trust that their opinions will be counted and reported fairly, and that the collected opinions have a chance of being seen by The Powers That Be and affecting their decision-making, and that the process won't be rigged to deny them their input
- Elected and appointed officials, or other authorities, need to trust that the counts and reports are not only accurate, but document both total opinion and the opinions of those people directly affected by any given issue (e.g., citizens of Switzerland don't get to vote in US Presidential elections)
- Technology providers who offer opinion-aggregating services need to trust that, if they scrupulously follow a proscribed industry-wide code of conduct, they will not be "thrown under the bus" for the results their services report
Here are nine principles that, if applied to online opinion aggregation, should help ensure all three facets of trust described above:
- Open: Just as anyone can host a blog, run an email server, or put up a Web application, anybody should be able to build tools and participate in the aggregation. Conversely, if the aggregation only matters if the issues or votes were placed on a single site, trust is broken due to lack of transparency. Similarly, anyone must be able to cast a vote on any issue — determining which votes are from people with "a horse in the race" must be done after the fact, not blocking votes up front, since such blocks could be applied indiscriminately to shut down useful opinions.
- Public: Not only must issues be publicly visible, but so must the votes, just as blog entries and comments are publicly visible. This is key to support the first principle, as with public issues and votes, anybody can build an aggregator to report results or verify the reported results of others. Conversely, if nobody can validate the voting, trust is broken (witness the hullabaloo over voting machine flaws).
- Standing: Some issues may be tied to some locality, such as whether or not a traffic light is needed at some town's main intersection. Votes need to be cast attached to an identifier of the voter, and there needs to be the means to determine, for a given vote on a given issue, if the voter has standing (e.g., is a resident of the town) or not (e.g., is an interested bystander). This is so the authorities can trust the results accurately reflect both their citizens' input and that of the wider community.
- Nyms: The third principle notwithstanding, people should be able to vote anonymously, even though it may mean their standing cannot be proven and hence their vote may "count less". People should also be able to vote under pseudonyms, with a "standing provider" empowered to indicate if the pseudonym has standing for some community. And, people should be able to make their votes public, tied to their own identity, if they so choose, and not be forced to a secret ballot, so as to help peer pressure encourage more participation. Citizens need to trust that their visibility is under their control, not the control of some outside party.
- Framing: Anybody should be able to raise an issue, with a community process to organize and synthesize related issues. Conversely, if only pollsters, government officials, or other privileged people are the only ones allowed to raise issues, trust is broken, since the framing of the question is a critical component for evaluating the resulting public opinion (push polls, anyone?).
- Structure: For authorities to be able to use the results, votes need to be countable. Hence, issues need to specify possible votes (e.g., multiple choice), and votes need to spell out their selection in addition to any prose the voter wishes to provide. Countability is central to trust: the public needs to see how their opinions can be counted, and authorities need to trust they won't get swamped with too much input that is too difficult to digest.
- Unencumbered: To support the first principle, there must be no requirements of anyone providing issues, positions, or technology to the online opinion gathering system. Conversely, if the system requires licensing patents or trademarks, or if the system requires technology providers to submit to some form of evaluation before they can participate, trust is broken, as these requirements might serve to concentrate power into too few hands.
- Unimpeded: Since the whole point of the exercise is for the citizens to provide input to the government, there can be no government interference in the collection and reporting of that input, lest the citizens lose trust in the process over fears of censorship or manipulation of results.
- Self-Policing: Since anyone can participate (principle #1) and the government cannot interfere (principle #8), the system must provide culture, conventions, and community to help ensure citizens can easily participate. Conversely, rules that might prevent "trolls" from participating will weaken trust, as those rules could be applied to others — in some cases, one person's troll is another person's position advocate.
Somewhere, sometime soon, the "killer app" will emerge — the American Idol of citizenship, as it were. Whether you agree with the above principles or not, I hope you agree that we need some principles established, and soon, lest somebody else determine the "rules of the game" for the benefit of a few, not the many.