Currently, it is commonly accepted that one can not design an electronic voting system which would be transparent, user verifiable yet still anonymous and legit. And additionally which would be resistant against initiatives of bribery and coercion. During a discussion on twitter last week to find a real argument what makes electronic voting insecure, I started to sketch a better scheme. The system seems to be safer than a paper bailout as one can check the set of citizens participating in the elections (so no fake identities) and can count the votes himself.
The design principles are exceptionally decentralized. That allows implementing elections on a Github repository where the board of members with merge rights represents a virtual state. Such a tool I think could be beneficial for activism and social banking. It could encourage people to donate more to activism.
For example, let's look into what makes people decide not to donate to a particular organization:
One of the reasons is distrust. There is no way of knowing whether a specific crowdfunding website is legit or a fraud. The solution to such a problem is to make local grassroots movements where people can meet each other and thus build local trust.
Another reason is that between many good things what the person finds there is one particular thing which makes him turn away. Political organizations tend to solve such problems by division into political parties. Wouldn't it make sense to have a party system for activism?
Lack of participative element on the internet.
Free rider problem because of the insignificance of the contribution.
Or on the other end are insignificant goals of local groups.
With electronic voting, citizens would fund local activist groups. International activist groups would look for those local activist groups which have common goals. The agreement would entail a delegated representative to the board of members, a promise that the allocated donations for an international organization would be transferred for any transnational democratic choice and that a list of members would be given for the global ledger. Many layers can be made to optimize trust and feasibility.
A delegated representative to an overseeing organization would be responsible for the integrity of proposals put forward for voting and ensure that votes are counted accurately. He would also have powers of exiting the democracy to establish a different, to purge disobeying board members or to disobey himself. That would be useful when a white majority votes on a harmful proposal to a black minority. In such a case, a board member could either decide not to fund the democratic choice or to divide the organization. Media which would then be funded with the same scheme would be responsible for making a discussion between divisions.