[Air-L] Knight News Challenge: Collaborators for free-range voting

[Michael Allan]

We're seeking collaborators for a Knight News Challenge proposal.
This year's challenge is, "How might we improve the way citizens and
governments interact?"  https://www.newschallenge.org/

The submission deadline is March 18.  Below is a tentative draft of
our proposal.  We haven't finalized it yet.  If you're a provider of
online voting services and wish to join in this proposal, please
contact one of us (see provider list in description below).  Aside
from technical providers, we might also need organizational support
(in part because there's financing if we win).


PROJECT TITLE

   Free-range voting

MAIN IMAGE

   http://zelea.com/project/outcast/vomir.png

DESCRIPTION

   This is a proposal to apply the technology of vote mirroring in
   order to forestall the formation of a monopoly in primary voting
   services.  Innovations in primary voting are beginning to improve
   the way citizens and governments interact.  New methods of
   continuous, online voting will soon enable citizens to form and
   express their opinions well in advance of government decisions.  To
   ensure that these developments offer enhancements to our political
   freedom, rather than reductions, we must maintain a level playing
   field among the competing technical providers; both the ability of
   the citizen to express herself clearly and effectively, and the
   ability of the technician to supply the necessary innovations,
   depend on the citizen's unrestricted freedom in choosing a
   technical provider.  You might think that opening up the source
   code of a voting facility would be sufficient to ensure that the
   facility itself stays free and open, but that is not true.  Voting
   is prone to network effects.  It's like a telephone service in this
   regard.  If I plug my telephone into a different network than
   everyone else is using, then it isn't going to work.  Having a copy
   of the source code won't help.  Unless something is done to address
   and tame the broader network effects, then online voters (like
   telephone customers before them) will become locked into the
   services of a dominant provider.

   The solution proposed here is vote mirroring.  Votes cast at
   facility A are mirrored at facilities B, C, and so forth.  This
   involves copying each vote and translating it from the format of
   the source facility (A) to that of the mirroring facility (B, C,
   etc.).  Voting methods may differ hugely and the translation may
   therefore entail a degree of information loss, making for an
   imperfect image.  Such imperfections cannot invalidate the overall
   technique, however, because a best effort at an image is always a
   better reflection of reality than no image at all.  The upshot is
   that each facility now gets all the votes and can show the truest
   possible picture of the overall results.  It no longer matters
   where I cast my own vote, because it shows up everywhere
   regardless.  So I can range freely across all the available
   facilities and settle on whichever best suits my personal needs and
   preferences.  Never again can I be trapped by a particular
   provider.

   This proposal will initially implement free-range voting in:

      Agora Voting
         http://agoravoting.com/
         Libre software voting platform, through the small company
         Wadobo, which has collaborated very actively in its
         development.  Contact: Eduardo Robles Elvira.

      Votorola
         http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.html
         Social software in support of public autonomy.  Contact:
         Michael Allan, +1 416-699-9528, http://zelea.com

      - if you're a technical provider of voting facilities and wish
        to join us in this proposal, please contact one of us -

   Together we plan to build a lightweight mirroring network to
   loosely interconnect our voting facilities.  We'll begin with
   voting forms that are fully public; those are the simplest to
   handle and they allow for unrestricted technical freedom among
   providers.  We'll work out the problems and gain experience with
   the technology.  An immediate benefit will be to reduce the
   expectation of network effects that has long poisoned relations
   among providers and hampered their development work.  Small
   projects will no longer be forced to devote scarce resources to
   attempts at tipping an unstable balance in their own favour.
   Instead, we may expect an improvement in the professional climate
   of the field and an increase in its attractiveness to talent, and
   other resources.

   Along the way, we'll document the techniques, patterns and
   protocols that work for us.  These will be the first entries in
   what we hope later evolves into a catalogue of lightweight
   standards that others may optionally apply; both to hook into the
   mirroring network itself, and also to interoperate with other
   facilities related to voting.  We'll avoid developing standards
   that are mandatory for mirroring, however, because that might
   restrict technical freedom, impair innovation, and degrade the
   mirroring network into a technical monopoly of its own.  Instead,
   we'll keep the mirroring network forever open to all possible
   methods, forms and implementations of voting.

WHAT IS YOUR PROJECT?  (1 sentence max)

   To apply the technology of vote mirroring in order to forestall the
   formation of an online monopoly in the provision of primary voting
   services, improve the professional climate among providers, and
   keep the field open as a source of innovation for improving the way
   citizens and governments iteract.

LINKS

   http://zelea.com/w/User:ThomasvonderElbe_GmxDe/Vote_mirroring
   http://zelea.com/w/User_talk:ThomasvonderElbe_GmxDe/Vote_mirroring
   http://zelea.com/w/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/Vote_mirroring_as_a_counter-monopoly_measure

OTHER IMAGE

   http://zelea.com/project/outcast/voteFree.png

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

   Vote mirroring is the invention of Thomas von der Elbe.  See:
   http://mail.zelea.com/list/votorola/2009-December/000215.html


The latest copy of this draft is at:
http://metagovernment.org/wiki/Knight_News_Challenge/Free-range_voting

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/
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