It’s not often the speaker comments on the future of democracy and technology. It’s a topic that rarely gets discussed.
Nancy knows there’s nothing in the constitution that prohibits remote voting. If there was she would have cited that, rather than her concerns about proxy voting.
You don’t need a committee to study the constitution to know remote voting is the future of democracy for the congress and the public.
Depriving the public of the technology to vote adequately is more likely to be unconstitutional than remote voting is. If the constitution was interpreted correctly Nancy would have to rewrite the house rules for compliance.
Where in the constitution does it allow for political parties?
If the public had a reasonable consensus system that worked as well as online banking, for instance, that would be a good start. There would be no voting lines and no horserace reporting.
Imagine if all the candidates had a constantly updated vote tally. The candidate with the most supporters on election day wins. Simple.
There is a lot of different ways to customize and simplify our voting experience. But we don’t.
“We haven’t got to it yet”, Nancy says as her webcam ironically malfunctions for a low quality moment.
An adequate electoral system that is accessible and verifiable, locally and nationally, could be achieved in short order. It’s possible. That’s what the public deserves. That’s what the government should prioritize.
The irony continues with Nancy mocking Zoom as a Chinese firm, even though Zoom is headquartered in San Diego. As if the United States can’t build our own communication system. We can’t trust China to provide our equipment so what are we supposed to do? She’s all out of ideas.
“This isn’t as easy as you might think” She says.
Wrong. It would be simple. It would be a citizenship network where everything is democratic and verifiable with no anonymous activity of any kind. The servers would be locally operated in each district to filter and tax commercial access to the community and validate poll results.
The citizens network would be able to facilitate voting but could also dispense funds in case of an emergency, like if we had a mass layoff due to a pandemic. The network could provide whatever functionality the public needs and can afford. And last I heard, money was no object.
And then Nancy asks, a little sarcastically, why the republicans would not want to fight waste, fraud, and abuse. It’s a rhetorical question that ignores the truth and deprives us of the answer, yet we all know what the answer is. It’s the money. What she calls waste they call profit.
“If it looks political to insist upon the truth, so be it.” – Nancy Pelosi