Despite all the bullying, polarization, and intentional disinformation found on social media, our era will eventually find fixes that rebalance the shared media experience. This newfound equilibrium will effectively minimize the politics of vitriol, blinkered tribalism, and cynical fear-mongering.
Already, the low-hanging fruit is being picked: proprietary networks are banning the worst offenders, journalists are waking up to the dangers of false equivalence, voters are learning the lessons of complacency, and citizens are finding the occasional need for outrage.
Yet another rebalancing will involve network algorithms that, with increasing effectiveness, screen out ‘fake news’ from highlighted, ‘trending’ topics.
And a third tier of fixes, engaged in by vulnerable democratic governments, will counter state-sponsored attacks on social media with active debunking.
What will prove most effective, however, in rebalancing shared media, are adaptations for digital technology that organically spread general knowledge, political fluency, and the secret sauce of social media: participation. This is because once voters are informed and plugged in politically, they are better able to both reject propaganda and understand contextual nuance. Nuance, in turn, means experiencing less friction, fear, and frustration--the byproducts of ignorance--reactions that can so easily boil over into the unsavory encounter. In its wake, an enhanced public reasonableness will make demagogue and fake news, alike, unlikely.
I describe, below, one key adaptation involving the US House of Representatives; what might humorously be described as ‘almost e-Democracy'. But first, a few early bird ideas with that same adaptive mission, as outlined in Gavin Newsom’s book, "Citizenville: How To Take The Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government”. Newsom was San Francisco’s mayor, is presently California’s Lt. Governor, and is considered a likely candidate for governor of that state in 2018.
* YouCut. In 2010 U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor introduced a way for constituents to cast votes on line item budget cuts. The winning cut each week was introduced on the House floor for an up-or-down vote.
* Project Madison: in 2012 Congressman Darrell Issa, using online feedback, allowed voters to make re-wording suggestions on pending legislation, then identified the most popular changes. Transparency extended to ID'ing each successful suggestion, along with its champion.
* Citizen Co-Sponsors. Beginning in 2013, a Facebook app allowed users to co-sponsor U.S. House legislation. Legislative campaigns using Facebook are now commonplace. Participants receive notifications regarding the legislation in question, and are then asked to reach out to ‘friends’, businesses, and other stakeholders to help ensure success.
If, in light of these early experiments with participatory democracy, we were to seek a truly ambitious and comprehensive way forward, we might aim for a more broad-based change: voting with digital devices. Of course online voting, while in some ways superior to the physical polling place, is nowhere near secure enough. And while the future may involve an opt-in auxiliary internet in which all communication is secure (Walter Isaacson identifies such a possibility at The Atlantic: "The Internet is broken; Starting From Scratch, Here’s How I’d Fix It"), this is, obviously, a long way off.
The Hive Mind
There is, however, a workaround. I call it The Hive Mind, because when and if fully implemented, representative government, whether the House of Representatives in the US, the House of Commons in the UK, or any other representative body, would constitute one enormous feedback loop that plugs voter opinion directly into the decision-making process. While technically not direct democracy, our workaround might be thought of as squaring that circle. In other words, it would be a close approximation of direct democracy, compared to the present half-hearted version, representative democracy, where all too often money talks, and lobbyists have been known to write the very rules governing their industry.
How it would work:
1) Each representative would have a webpage featuring videos (each perhaps five minutes in length) covering both single issues and more general topics.
2) After viewing a randomly assigned video, constituents would register their opinions by choosing from among multiple-choice options on a series of questions.
3) Polling firms would sample constituent opinion, then present representatives with published results. Representatives could choose to abide by these opinions when voting, could decline to offer the service in the first place, or could select from published results as they saw fit. That is, they wouldn’t be legally bound to concur, but could advertise their willingness to do so.
4) This system, once implemented, would tend to focus election campaigns on video presentation, and adherence to constituent opinion, rather than on a candidate’s personal life and other ancillary issues. Plus, lobbying by special interests would be curtailed to the extent that a representative’s votes were pre-determined by constituent input.
5) Importantly, a representative’s webpage would enable dissent, amendment, and other feedback. In this way, The House of Representatives would take on the character of a thinking mind, grappling with alternatives, and defusing otherwise explosive issues with contextual background.
FAQ
Q: A District’s Polling Results Would Be Reflective of Constituent Age, Sex, Income, etc., Wouldn’t They?
A: Yes. First time visitors to their representative's webpage would be asked to provide basic demographic information. Then, when a 30-something female with a high school education, an income around $40,000, and no children, is needed to complete a sample, all opinions generated by that demographic are in effect shuffled and drawn from, as one would pick a single, unseen playing card from among many.
Since a district’s demographic profile would rarely change, multiple polling firms could be hired for relatively little to essentially plug in data, once a firm’s proprietary profile were set. A polling average would then refine results.
Q: What About Poll Reliability? The US Recently Had An Election In Which The Unexpected Happened.
A: Yes, but the polling average (Real Clear Politics) was only off by 1.1 percentage points compared to the final popular vote. And because there were an unusually large number of undecided voters late in the process, the dramatic revelations involving both the FBI investigation and of Russian hacking--not to mention fake news--account for much misdirection, with rural, low-information voters, not surprisingly, breaking the furthest from pre-election projections.
Besides, most of our proposed system's results won't be close. The minority, those within a point of 50/50, could allow a judgement call by the representative in question.
Q: Why Not Rate Polling Firms and Weight Their Results Accordingly?
A: This might best be implemented once firms have a chance to acclimate. Ratings could be based on legislative elections. Polling firms would publish predictions the day before an election, and would be rewarded depending on how close they modeled the real-life result. Success would mean both greater influence (additional weight in polling averages) and financial compensation (contracts with performance bonuses).
Q: What About Security? Is Any Internet Portal Safe?
A: Because ‘contacting your representative’ involves a politician knowing how you feel about a given issue, our information exchange is two-way, much like a credit card company and its customers, rather than a one-way secret ballot. An email or text receipt could be sent to each constituent to confirm their expressed opinions. On a particularly significant question, say whether to switch over to ’single-payer’ healthcare, a second, paper receipt could be printed out, to enable a recount.
Plus, because videos are assigned to constituents randomly—and eventually there would be hundreds of videos--there is little chance of intentionally influencing a particular issue.
Q: Are constituents voting on as many videos as they want?
A: No, a limit would be advisable to preserve sampling viability. A constituent who successfully opined on the content of, say five videos, could be allowed to pick a sixth of their choice. In the case of all such ‘free choice' picks, however, opinions would be part of a separate tally that gauged ‘feedback ferocity’, only. Following their sixth video, constituents would be told they had reached their limit, and would be politely asked to return the following day.
Q: Those Sharing The Same Device In The Same Household Would, I Assume, Be Able To Register Individually.
A: Right. A pin number, plus a Social Security number (in the US) or other form of ID (eventually, fingerprints), would likely be used to distinguish constituents.
Q: How Would This Idea Be Implemented?
A: It would probably begin with several representatives and a handful of prominent issues. Then, in subsequent elections, challengers could offer the service if the incumbent hadn't yet done so. Videos, meanwhile, would likely be produced by political parties or factions and used by multiple representatives.
Q: Isn’t It More Likely That Interest Groups Would Make The Videos?
A: Perhaps so, especially on more specific issues. The level of SNAP benefits (food stamps for the poor), for example, might be handled by a political party. Making organic milk and cheese eligible for the WIC program (aid to mothers with young children) might be something for a farm organization.
Q: Is It Likely, Given a Total Population of About 711,000 Per House District, That Large Enough Samples Are Possible?
A: Initially, results would lack adequate sampling. This would then change as the word got out and more constituents showed up. To begin with, representatives would only take opinion tallies under consideration, but could then switch over to actually abiding by poll results once samples were large enough. And, this triggering level could be identified ahead of time, removing an ‘excuse’ for not abiding by poll results, once having promised to do so.
To encourage participation, there may be a place for minor prizes, or if necessary, those of some modest value. Most likely, though, because outside groups would organize members to take part in the separate, ‘feedback ferocity’ tallies (a viewer’s sixth, free choice video), and because constituents would have to make their way through five other videos first, this would likely create the necessary participatory volume for sampling to be successful.
Q: Pretty Hard To Imagine Low-Income Constituents Using This System, Especially The Computer-less, no?
A: There are currently programs that provide free phones for low-income Americans. These could be used to accommodate The Hive Mind. Plus, there are community centers and the local library.
As for low-income constituents in general, there is a gut-level truth here, obviously; if you don’t have leisure time, you won’t be able to sit through a 5-minute video, let alone six such presentations.
There are, however, fairly credible comebacks to this point. The first involves statistics. If there are 500 low-income viewers of a video, and 5,000 each for those with middle and high incomes, and there is only a need for 400 from each group, the website interface would simply select all it needs, no problem.
A second comeback involves the question of prizes. If there are prizes, and if they are of some value, constituents with lower incomes will experience a greater relative benefit. For example, the chance to win a $50 Savings Bond might be worth 5-10 minutes for those with modest incomes, but perhaps not for the wealthy.
Q: But Shouldn’t Participation Be Based On Interest?
A: Certainly. While in the end prizes may be necessary, they have the disadvantage of clouding the message.
And yet the logic for replacing our current, marginally corrupt political framework with The Hive Mind argues for speed in implementation. The sooner that a legislator has a constituent feedback loop up and running, the sooner that legislator can tell a lobbyist “sorry, but my constituents have spoken”. And the sooner this happens, the sooner the legislator’s unscrupulous challengers in the next election will be disarmed. For example, a TV ad with the punchline, "Congressman Smith voted to end Medicare”, becomes “…Smith misled voters into supporting cost-cutting in Medicare”, a considerably weaker point. And when feedback on the Congressman’s webpage points out that the TV ad was paid for by a self-interested lobbying group, there is relative transparency and accountability—so, the sooner the better for implementation. Meaning that prizes may be necessary.
A more vigorous way to goose website visitor counts would involve large prizes, beyond the scope of a typical representative’s $1-2 million Members Representational Account. For example, imagine if, in the year 2023, all participants who visited their representative's relevant webpage at least once during a given month were eligible for one of a hundred $1,000 drawings. One hundred drawings for each Congressional District (Washington D.C. adds one, for 436), involves an annual cost of only $523.2 million in savings bonds: 1,000 x 100 x 12 x 436.
Q: How Can We Be Sure About Constituent Data?
A: At first glance this would seem to be a problem. Wouldn’t some more cynical constituents pose as under-represented demographic groups in order to increase their chances of being heard? First, the number of cheaters is likely to be very small, and unlikely to affect outcomes if the sample size is large enough. Second, some kind of verification is possible. Public records, for example, identify home owners with specific addresses. And third, polling firms use census data as the foundation for their demographic profiles. When census / polling data are mismatched in an anticipated direction, a slight adjustment to a demographic profile can be made.
Q: Perhaps You Could Describe The Hive Mind From A Representative’s Perspective.
A: The future is always a challenge, but let’s press ahead, nevertheless:
* The big news of the day in our representative’s district, the year being 2023, is of rising unemployment.
* In response, our representative receives a brief ‘jobs action’ video from party headquarters.
* Our representative posts the video, links to her webpage using social media, and phones local allies (unions, Chamber of Commerce, etc.), asking for web traffic.
* Next, our representative has her staff record a local version of the nationally focused presentation.
In her own video she asks her constituents which of several employment strategies is the most likely in their community, giving specific examples of employment increases that have recently occurred (federal government spending, state level tax policy changes, local incubation projects, etc.). She then asks for opinions on current, imminent, and long-stalled approaches she imagines she could conceivably vote on.
Q: How Would A Video Allow For Dissent and Amendment?
A: The likeliest system would probably involve the usual comments section as found on websites today. A poster could tag a comment as a ‘challenge’, which, if it gathered enough support, would produce a ‘rebuttal’ that would be added to the original video. These challenges and amendments would have to be prominently featured on a representative’s website. They would then be linked to by that representative’s challengers in future elections.
To keep representatives honest, the House of Representatives itself should set specific standards for successful challenges. Furthermore, the House itself should keep track of challenges and amendments. These could be sorted by:
- the amount of support they generate (separated into several categories of popularity)
- the relative percentage of up-votes to down-votes
- the subject matter in question
- the date on which they occur
This alone should make the House a more fact-based, consensus driven institution. What sane politician likes having attention drawn to his worst biases, snubs, and factual errors?
Most likely, dissent and amendment wouldn’t be allowed for those choosing to view their sixth, free choice video, as this would encourage a flood of astroturf reaction.
Q: Why Haven’t We Seen The Hive Mind Before?
A: In a nutshell: Timeliness. Only very recently has the digital revolution--specifically, internet access--approached 100%. This was always the biggest hurdle, since democracies require that everyone be at the table.
There are other reasons, too:
· Refinement: In 2010 an independent
candidate for the House from South
Dakota garnered 6% of the vote; he
advocated a much simpler system than
ours that lacked safeguards like polling,
random video access, etc.
· Flexibility: While direct democracy may
be an ideal for some, it can be critiqued as
allowing the rabble to rule. The Hive Mind,
however, allows representatives a choice
of whether to pick and choose from among
poll results, or, whether to solicit opinions
in the first place.
· Interest: Even if polling had previously
been considered as a way to render
constituent opinion, there was always
the seeming problem of interest.
Sampling requires not dozens, but
hundreds of responses. This is where
‘feedback ferocity’ and savings bond
drawings come into play.
But by far the most discouraging factor keeping The Hive Mind system under wraps has been:
· Two-Way Security. The internet is not secure.
To be taken seriously, E-democracy must be an
exchange accountable at both ends, rather than
an attempt at a ‘secret ballot’ on one end.
Conclusion
Often, political reformers attempt too big a bite. A change to the Constitution. A filibuster-proof Congress. A hoped-for rising up of the downtrodden. Instead, The Hive Mind is easy. Just one representative is all it would take. Simply put up a webpage with the idea in brief, several dozen videos to get things started, and a ‘challenges’ page for critiques and mistakes. Send out notifications on social media. Compose a press release and send it to local and national news outlets. Contact key political journalists, inviting long-form articles. Most importantly, contact organizations with legislative outreach staff. All this should generate traffic to the website and may induce some organizations to produce additional, suitable videos. Finally, contact fellow representatives and invite them to join the digital revolution.
