Electronic Government

In my mind, the internet has the capability of bringing power back to the people more directly. Of course the most serious problem with electronic voting is security, and error prevention, as these could have major consequences. Best to start small and develop the program and give it more responsibility as security and errors become less of a concern.

I say, start out with home owners associations and allow every member to vote on decisions instead of the board. This will make people more involved in their complex, and make it less influence by an individual's preferences. Hopefully this program would make it's way to the national level where people could vote directly for president I don't know why we don't already). But we could also vote on bills in congress. This would mean that every citizen would take more interest in politics, as they can be an active part of it. They will vote directly for bills and measures they care about, and abstain from those they don't. Of course, education about politics (as well as argument and logic) will become more important. I can't fathom what congressmen's jobs will be, or how we can vote on a secret measure, but i am sure that it would work itself out in time.

One interesting idea would be bill written as wikis. One fear might be that the masses are not as informed as congress and will not make as wise of decisions. However, I believe that people would only vote on those issues that they are interested in, and presumably know something about (at least as well as the politicians do). I think the people's collective intelligence will far outweigh the average congressman's on any given subject. One thing that would be very different, though I am not sure it would be a bad thing, is politicking. 300 million peoplecannot make deals for certain agendas, although writing bills as wikis might solve this problem.