Technology changes and, as technology changes so should our uses of it to carry out human purposes. This post contains thoughts on how advances in technology may be leveraged to improve voting and outcomes from voting—for human purposes. That is, fairness and efficiency are taken into account in regards to these suggestions. Current political power apportion and predicted political outcomes are not.
So, let’s take a look at voting by the legislatures (1), voting by the populace (2), and how we count the votes of the populace, in terms of representation and apportionment (3).
(1) Currently, legislative voting is open, in that each representative’s vote is known and recorded. What if we went the other way, and let each legislative vote be secret, or tallied only by party and not by the individual? As things are, a great deal of pressure can be brought on individual representatives in terms of how influencers or power groups want them to vote. That has become the main driver of voting accountability—the legislature cannot buck the major power groups with their votes or they face consequences. Originally, this system was meant to be transparent to the voting populace and to provide accountability to the voters that each representative represents. But we have gone far past the point where public accountability is the main driver of the votes of the legislators.
The population has grown enormously. Technologies of all sorts have come forth and complicated the world. Politics and laws, and especially outcomes from a given law, have become largely opaque to the voting public. Moreover, communications and information regarding the political process has become filtered and manipulated—politics has become political theater.
Will secret voting for legislative bodies fix all of these problems? Probably not. But, in combination with other reforms such as structured free political information online, opening up the party system from the binary monolith we have now, ethical requirements for public servants, and perhaps removing some mandatory common sense measures and stipulations from the whimsy of popular voting, it would be a good start.
(2) For the votes of the people, I would go the opposite way. I think secret ballots have served their purpose and we can move on to open public voting—with a number of stipulations.
Notice I say ‘move on’ and not ‘go back’. Historically, secret ballots were adopted because of public pressure at polling places for people to vote certain ways. At the time, secret voting solved that problem. With changes in technology and communications, we now have better options. The problems we face now are more in terms of loss of trust in election integrity, with mail in ballots and electronic voting and counting machines and a completely opaque (to the voting public) process of vote tabulation. The secrecy is eroding trust in elections and elected officials.
So, I propose that voting be formally open to public perusal by votes being embedded in a cryptographic blockchain. Furthermore, that such voting should take place at any point between elections (though changes in individual votes should only occur once monthly). Even further, write-in candidates should be integral to the new voting system.
Are blockchains secure from fraud and corruption? Yes, if there are sufficient independent trusted nodes to maintain blockchain integrity. For this purpose, their would be thousands upon thousands of nodes, either one for each town, one for each post office, or both. A ‘node’ is just a computer or group of computers that work to validate the integrity of the blockchain. Sufficient independent nodes, running open source and thus verifiable software, can maintain secure blockchains without systemic fraud or corruption. Having enough nodes will be easy, given the number of stakeholders (everyone). Maintaining the independence and verifiability of the nodes will be work, but still very do-able.
Could individual votes be corrupted on the end where the people enter their voting preferences? Yes, but this can be mitigated and, since blockchains are completely transparent and last forever, such corruption can be tracked and punished. Grandpa could get hacked, or tricked, and his votes changed, but that can only happen once per month and there would be plenty of time to look things over and fix the problem. Access would be recorded. Penalties for vote fraud could be very stiff, and thus not worth doing on such an individual level. Suspicious mass changes would be easy to track and tackle as appropriate.
Why only be able to change your vote once per month? To mandate care in choosing and thought upon choices, and generally to add gravitas back into the voting system and process. Also, to reduce fatigue in the duties of the voters and so to make political engagement both more meaningful and more likely to be engaged in. We had this, years ago when life moved at a slower pace. We can gain back meaningful political participation with such meaningful and carefully chosen mandates as this.
Another of which is that voters can then enter any person they want in as a political candidate for office, by the simple act of entering a vote between elections. Regardless of whether a political party is involved, or whether that person had thought about running, or even whether they would be willing to do the job. For an individual to cast their vote in such a way, is itself a public charge or responsibility upon the person they vote for. Will that person answer the charge? Let us find out. Overall and in general, I think that this would be a good reform that opens up the stale, elitist, and contrived electoral (party) system that we have now.
With years between elections and clearly visible candidates for each office at any given point, we both do away with the cash requirements of formal political campaigns and give everyone plenty of time to look at candidates and get to know them. Could this new system be corrupted once more? Of course, but that will be a battle for following generations to fight. This proposed system fixes much of the corruption we have now.
Computers are here to stay. We cannot live without them at this point (most of the population cannot, that is). Cryptographic blockchains have also proven their use value and integrity at this point (if not, everyone would be grabbing Bitcoin left and right and it would be worthless). Let’s leverage these technologies to work for the public good.
In order for this proposal to work, there must be clear standards on who is able to lawfully vote, each person must be able to access a computer (or visit a post office or public library where a blockchain node could be accessed as a public service), and voters must be promptly listed as deceased or incapable (and their votes nullified) on the blockchain.
(3) What about how we count votes and apportion results?
For starters, it would be nice to do away with gerrymandering. With this open blockchain voting system, the quick fix would be to have voting be at-large per state. Though a better way might be to tabulate number of votes by party (including independent) and apportion seats based on votes by population per party per state. After all, we would not have to rely on a census—the votes would all be there and show how many voting citizens each state contains and represents. No more drawing districts and no more states fudging the census to gain more seats. Let people vote for whomever they want and let the candidates with the most votes become the victors and representatives of the people, regardless of state particularism or party power politics.
Of course, we would want to do this differently based on particular office and how it serves the needs of the people. That above might be fine for the lower chamber, but not for the upper. It may or may not work for the chief executive—an office which pretty much requires a certain amount of competence and integrity. Regardless, methods of tabulation and apportionment can be worked out. Outcomes and consequences can be more predictable with slow-time elections that happen for all the world to see, with changes taking place once per month, twelve times per year, all the years between elections.
Exotic voting options like ranked choice voting (RCV) would also become irrelevant. That is, effectively people would be engaging in another voting round once per month, though only the last month before the election would count. Or not—a person could enter their vote the day after one election (due to trust in a particular candidate, say) and not change it until the next election rolls around. Or even further for an incumbent. Also, everyone would have time to research candidates (and keep up with them) and in electoral terms (though not issue and/or policy terms) political parties would lose their monopoly power already by the reforms being proposed overall.
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Could these reforms be implemented? Certainly. With a great deal of public support, however that may come about. Are they likely to occur? Unknown at this time. Are they within the realm of current political possibility? Certainly not.
But hope springs eternal.
[Joseph Jones, 18 March 2026]