When Will We Be Able to Vote Online

On November 6th, 2012 I had many family members and friends ask me if I voted and who I voted for. To their surprise, I said I had voted for nobody. Why did I not vote? Well there are many reasons, one being that my vote simply has zero effect on whether the president or senators in my state get elected because no one won by one vote. This is a very dry way to look at it, but given my math and science brain it is a logical way to think.

That is not the actually reason for why I did not vote, but is a good example of how our current system is severely outdated given our increased population and technological capabilities. In other words, although it may seem as if your vote or “voice” matters, it really has little effect on the direction of the country unless you hold high political or business positions with influence on others around you. Regardless, The reason for my non-vote is that our current politicians and government system is undermining the human and technological potential we have as a country and world. This is not necessarily because of greed or corruption, but simply a lack of understanding of how the system works, why it is outdated and what we can do to improve it.

Currently we are in a fiat monetary system in which central banks can print essentially unlimited money to support governments who continuously run massive deficits, increasing the global debt. This is one of the central problems we face, and no politician seems to talk about it or have any idea how to fix it.

As Sergrey Brin stated of Google, in order for our country and society to advance our politicians must abandon party politics and focus solely on what we need to do to improve our country. Party politics hinders our ability to produce objective solutions and methods for solving our economic and environment problems. If all of our politicians were simply independent then we would actually have candidates who did what they believed was best for the country, and not what would help them win their parties candidacy.

When I hear politicians talk about how they are going to reduce the debt by increasing taxes or reducing taxes and government spending, they either have no idea what they are talking about or they are simply lying. No amount of tax increases will reduce the deficit because tax increases will reduce consumer spending and thus reduce the amount of total money taken in by the government. Additionally reducing taxes will not do anything to reduce the deficit because our economy is inflated by government spending and reducing taxes and government spending will reduce our GDP.

The fact of the matter is that our country and economic system is severely flawed, and the democrats and republicans will not fix the actual problems because that would be political suicide. The global economic system is set up so that debt is money, and increasing loans or the amount of debt increases the money supply and thus world GDP. This cannot go on forever, and eventually will be disastrous for everyone across the globe.

How can we fix these problems? Well the truth is, no one really knows the answer. Jacque Fresco of The Venus Project proposes a resourced based economy. The idea of a resource based economy has some merit and is a more logical economic system than our current failling system that leaves 1 billion hungry worldwide, however his explanations lack many specifics and his idea seems more like a general direction than an actual solution to our current problems.

An economy based on resources and maximizing resources would solve many of our economic and poverty related problems, but actually accomplishing this transition seems almost impossible. Additionally formulating a government and all the logistics of creating this new economic system seem far from feasible anytime soon.

A short term solution that could help improve the current political and economic woos we continue to face would be to at least vote online. This could improve the amount of people voting, the frequency of voting and the number of issues constituents could vote on. This would allow the average person to push for issues and promote change online that could go viral quickly, so that more could get accomplished in less time.

Voting on the internet would definitely open up brand new possibilities for not only government but the entire world. If we were to establish politically and non-corrupt online open source technologies for citizens to collaborate and generate policies, we could accomplish more than we do in our current divided political state. Voting online does seem like a good idea, but the security risks are enormous and voter fraud could be difficult to defeat. With all the technology we have it would seem that we could figure out a way to stop voter fraud online, so that we could develop a truly democratic form of government in which everyone can vote and draft documents or bills and not just a select few who have the money and influence to win elections.

However, until a safe proof method for voting online is established, voting online is just as much as a pipe dream as a resource based economy. As an after thought, we can bank online, which brings up the point, if money can be transferred securely online why can’t our votes be?