Towards digital democracy

The purpose of this digital manifesto is to describe digital tools for managing a state in which the people, being the only source of power, do not divest this power from themselves, but only delegate the functions of governing the state to elected representatives and only for the time that citizens allow.

Digital communication systems will allow citizens to show their support or distrust of government officials in real time, and a betrayal of this trust will risk immediate removal from power.

This system would avoid the usurpation of power by small groups of people and prevents the transition from democracy to totalitarianism and other destructive forms of government.

To achieve this goal, a radical new form of state administration is therefore proposed – digital democracy or “digitalism”.

Digitalism

Digitalism is a “triune” or trinity of voice, power and money. Each of these categories is digitized and interconnected in real time with other categories.

The political basis of digitalism is the principle of a continuous referendum, whereby a citizen can immediately withdraw his vote from one or another government representative for whom he previously voted. Thus, any official can be immediately removed if his public support is below a certain threshold. The threat of this immediate sanction would make it possible to stop unjust reforms, or hostilities launched by governments.

This digital democracy would also use a decentralized cryptocurrency, which means that your wallet of digital money is always with you and no one can control it but you. Officials will be able to manage the budget until their digital signature expires or until it is revoked by citizens. Digitalism is therefore opposed to CBDC – central bank digital currencies – which lodge people’s money with the central bank, giving the state complete control over the financial resources of citizens and organizations.

The History of Information

Thousands of years have passed since the initial unification of people from simple groups and tribes into giant states. The larger such groups became, the more difficult they were to manage. In many ways, the complexity of control is related to the speed of distribution of control information. This speed depends on the physical means of dissemination of the information itself. In turn, the physical means depend on the stage of development of the civilization itself.

Before the advent of writing and paper, the leader of a small tribe could orally issue an order in person. With the growth of population, and the appearance of larger numbers of kindred tribes, messengers were required to distribute the leader’s oral information. We cannot judge how people’s degree of trust in information from such a messenger was determined, because words can always introduce distortions, be it intentionally or accidentally. However, it was not possible to create stable democratic states on this principle.

With the advent of writing, which could be fixed and transferred on clay tablets, parchment, birch bark and paper, there came the opportunity to distribute orders – control information – over long distances without distortion, which undoubtedly contributed to the unification of the growing population into states.

The discovery of electricity and the subsequent advent of the telegraph in the 19^th century and the telephone in the 20^th tied modern states together even more firmly. Control information could now travel thousands of kilometers almost instantly. At the same time, the important role of paper as a carrier and custodian of state information did not disappear, indeed all important documents continued to be printed and signed on paper.

With the rapid introduction of radio and television in the early and mid-20th century, the governments of established states were strengthened using propaganda. A citizen from hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away could now hear and see his leader, which undoubtedly gave them recognition, significance and legitimacy.

By now, the vast majority of citizens already lived so far from the centers of their states that they never saw their rulers in real life. The growth of population not only prevented the millions of citizens in each state from personally seeing the leader, but also restricted their ability to influence his decisions. People began to believe that their leader decided everything, and that they themselves cannot do anything, and do not influence anything.

The system of electing people to power in democracies only covered the selection of public representatives. There was no workable system for the quick, legal and bloodless removal from power of rulers and groups of people usurping power for their own purposes. So, even electoral democracies could gradually slide towards totalitarianism.

This continued until the end of the 20th century, when the first information network that united people appeared in the shape of the Internet.

The Internet

By the beginning of the 21st century, the Internet had penetrated every state and almost every citizen had interacted with this worldwide network. The web was used for entertainment, education, new types of work and advertising, so state bodies also began to create their own websites in the network.

The role of paper as a carrier and custodian of government information began to decline with the development of computers, and data centers were created where information could be stored and processed. Many government services have been converted into electronic form which citizens could access via the Internet, and identification of a citizen increasingly rested on an identity or password issued to him by the state.

Electronic voting

At the same time, attempts by the authorities to imitate digital democracy through electronic voting began. However, the program code of the platform on which it worked was often closed from outside observers, as was the process of counting the votes.

There was no way to control what was happening from the outside. The citizen had the opportunity to see how he had voted but the closed nature of the system left room for manipulation in certain countries during the counting of votes. Thus, the entire voting processed was completely controlled by the state in general and by those who organized it in particular.

Such electronic voting did not offer the function of withdrawing a citizen’s vote. The power of a citizen to control his own fate was delegated through voting to his elected representatives and could not be withdrawn by a citizen if he was not satisfied with the actions of the authorities after the fact.

Digital Signatures

The development of the Internet made it tempting to simplify paper workflows with the help of electronic means. This could be done only by creating a new digital tool – an electronic digital signature – to assure verification of individuals’ identities.

The use of digital signatures was accelerated by the COVID pandemic, as face-to-face interactions were depricated in favour of virtual means.  This allowed economically active citizens to remotely confirm various economic transactions on their behalf and receive government electronic services. The digital signatures required in these processes were issued by both government agencies and commercial organizations.

Digital Money

At the same time, the development of smart phones linked to the Internet allowed the abandonment of paper money payments in favor of cashless payments. Paper money issued by state banks began to lose relevance, and the trust of citizens began to shift towards electronic payments.

Electronic means of payment were also encouraged by the invention and rapid growth of novel digital currencies protected by cryptographic methods such as blockchain.  Issued by non-state organizations, their rapid rise in value created  explosive growth and sparked unprecedented interest of citizens around the world.

The incredible success of free decentralized digital currencies meant that state banks soon labelled cryptocurrencies as a threat to the stability of their economic systems. Cryptocurrencies have been banned in some countries, and are restricted in others. At the same time, state banks began to prepare for the digitalization of their own national currencies, but on the principle of deep centralization, which implies full control by the state as an intermediary in each transaction.

To avoid this, digitalism will use a decentralized cryptocurrency, and officials will be able to manage the budget until their digital signature expires or until it is revoked by citizens.

A Digital World

By 2022, most of the technical means required to enable the digital transition to a new form of government – digital democracy or digitalism – are in place. However, in most countries, digital technologies have begun to be used as a tool to strengthen the incumbent authorities. At the same time, even in democracies, civil rights and freedoms have been eroded or approach a state of collapse.

A combination of electronic voting, the digitalization of national currencies, the ubiquity of video cameras in public places with the ability to identify any person, the recording of all telephone conversations, the saving all activity on the Internet, control over “likes” and comments on social networks and – in China – assigning a “social rating” to a citizen, have led societies around the world down a path of the “digital camp” where states have total control over citizens.

Far from freeing and empowering individuals, control of digital technologies has been seized by the narrow elites which control many states to tighten their grip on power.  The pace of technological change has meant society has not had time to consider or moderate this power through constitutional or legalistic means, while most citizens lean towards the opinion that they have nothing to hide, so do not object to state monitoring.

Voting in a Digital Democracy

By contrast, the ideology of digital democracy assumes that the people, being the only source of power, have the right to defend democracy and can regain their control with the help of digital technologies. The “digital camp” should not constrain and oversee the population, but instead it should restrain the authorities. Just as our leaders argued that honest citizens should not fear state oversight, so our leaders should not shy from transparency and accountability if they are truly acting in the best interests of the people.

The functioning of digital democracy can be undertaken with the help of a network of special data centers. These would hold computers on which a special open source software platform is installed which contains all instructions regarding the state structure and a list of all elected public positions. Anyone would be able to monitor the work of these data centers, as they would take on many of the roles of the state, just as they have in other aspects of society and the economy.

The data center would issue and protect a single digital signature for each each citizen, and special state signatures to officials. This single digital signature could be issued to a citizen upon receipt of a passport, for example, and effectively digitize that citizen’s constitutional and social power.

The power of the people would be expressed through free elections by universal suffrage with the help of the single digital signature of each citizen. Elections would scheduled by the data center automatically when one of the elective positions is vacant.

There would be no need for any central body consisting of people calling elections, counting votes, and issuing certificates to officials. All these functions would be automatically performed by the data center. Thus, intermediaries between the votes of citizens and candidates in elections are removed and so the possibility of fraud, corruption or influence by groups of people who want victory for one or another candidate is removed.  In addition, the cost of organizing new elections is practically zero, allowing more elections to take place.

In this digital democracy, voting takes place with the help of an application program in a citizen’s personal gadget, into which his digital signature is loaded. The citizen’s digital voice, authenticated by his signature, is encrypted and sent to the data center. The vote is encrypted so that no one can determine for whom or against whom a particular citizen voted. Only the citizen himself can check for whom his vote was counted and withdraw his vote, if necessary, at any time.

During elections, the data center collects the votes of citizens for a certain candidate, and if the percentage of those who voted for him exceeds 50%, then this candidate, as an elected representative of the legitimate authority, is issued a special state digital signature corresponding to the position.

Such a signature is similar to the current certification of a deputy, governor or president and completely replaces it. The state digital signature is activated from the moment citizens vote on the candidacy of a representative for a certain post and is issued for a certain period. The legitimacy of the representative of power elected in this way will be maximized.

After elections are held, citizens continue to directly control power through a continuous referendum, in which each “yes” vote can be immediately withdrawn by a citizen if he considers the actions of the government elected by him unacceptable. Thus, the vote “for” can turn into a vote “against”.

In this system, there is no point in putting pressure on the voter, as today, under pressure, a citizen will vote “for”, but tomorrow, without pressure, they will already be “against”.

For example, if 60% of those who took part in the elections voted “for” the winning candidate, then 40% of those who voted “for” his competitors are counted as 40% “against” the winning candidate. The official receives an active rating of 60% for and 40% against.

Citizens who did not take part in the voting should be able to express their support or distrust of the representative of the authorities after he was chosen by those who voted. Thus, new supporters or opponents may appear in power, who are included in the mass of voters, thereby changing the rating.

As soon as public support for an official falls below the threshold, his state digital signature ceases to be valid and he loses his authority.

The realization by an official that his support from society and his career directly depends on him doing what he promised will offer all the incentive he needs to work for the benefit of voters.

Political Competition

In a digital democracy, any citizen can apply for any post in the state. In order for voters to vote for a candidate for a particular post, the candidate must be recognizable, and therefore be active. Recognizable personalities can compete with each other for votes. If new elections are scheduled for one of the posts for which the candidate has views, then he can apply to the system to participate in the elections. If a candidate is not banned from participation in elections due to previous wrongdoing, then his candidacy automatically appears in the lists for voting by voters.

Political competition under digitalism can be very active, rather than eliminated entirely under authoritarianism or squashed into short blocks of time in democracies. Since various posts in the state can be vacated at any time, all politicians need to be visible in order to be recognizable by citizens, and so an equally independent mass media will play an important role in this process.

Delegation of Votes

Digitalism has a new, previously impossible function, allowing a citizen to delegate his vote to any other citizen he trusts. For example, a citizen might entrust his vote to his more active relative if he himself does not want to participate in the voting. He might even entrusts his voice to any well-known politician, however in these cases, the vote can also be withdrawn back at any time, or delegated to another person.

In the case of delegation, the vote must be encrypted, and so the delegate who was entrusted with the vote or votes should not see who exactly gave him the votes, otherwise this can lead to pressure on voters, vote buying and other abuses.

A delegate can participate in any voting on any issue using the accumulated votes. However, in this case, information about how the delegate votes must be available to all those who have delegated their vote to him, so delegates can gain or lose votes if their position becomes inconsistent with the wishes of the voters.

Thus, every citizen does not have to constantly participate in voting. He can delegate this function through his vote to any citizen. If a delegate decides to run for office, he can use his accumulated votes to vote for himself. At the same time, at any time, the vote can be withdrawn by the voter back, for example, to vote for another candidate.

Transparent and Secure Data Centers

A prerequisite for the operation of a data center that issues electronic signatures and collects and counts votes is the open sourcing of the code running the platform, as well as access to outside observers in real time to all data on the operation of the system and counting of votes. Of course, such outside observers, whether a citizen or an official of any level, should have absolutely no opportunity to influence the system itself, except by participating in the vote.

So how can we ensure that the digitalization of democracy, as an instrument of people’s politics, does not turn into an instrument of total control of the minority over the majority? After all, those who will “manage” the data center will be able to seize all control into their own hands.

The solution is a network of decentralized data centers based on distributed ledger technology – the same blockchain theory which underpins crytocurrencies. Information is embedded in them in ways which make it impossible to change, however imperceptibly. The creation of many data centers that duplicate each other’s information in different regions of the country will ensure redundancy, and information from a voting citizen should be broadcast immediately to all data centers via the network.

Thus, they must be set up as “radios” to receive votes from a continuous referendum of citizens over the Internet. If some data center missed the “reception” of votes, or received an illegal stuffing of votes from those who want to seize power, then the rest of the data centers should be able, due to their superiority in numbers, to update the information of such a problematic data center, or even stop using him to “communicate”, turning him into a “outcast”.

There should not be one main data center on which others would depend. If someone takes control and seizes one data center, then other data centers should be able to disconnect from him, noting his activity as “rogue”. Thus, citizens will always be able to rely on the legitimacy of the data center system as a whole, and the more data centers there are in the country, the less sense there will be in trying to seize power.

With the further development of technologies – from an increase in the speed of processors, to memory sizes and wireless data transfer speed – it is possible to foresee a state in which a copy of all the relevant information in a data centre could  be placed on the personal gadget of each citizen, just as AI and large language models will soon be.

Creating a platform for such data centers is a complex technical task, but it can be solved in the 21st century as blockchain, a system already used in cryptocurrencies, is the basis of such technology.

State Cryptocurrency

The most important tool for exercising power is the management of public finances. Any order of an official is supported by money to finance the people and organizations that will eventually carry out these orders.

After being given a special state digital signature upon election, every official would therefore have to sign his orders with this signature. Further, these documents would then be sent to data centers that store the state budget in the form of state cryptocurrency. Through these data centers, according to the orders of officials, the cryptocurrency would then be distributed throughout the economy.

This also process expresses the trinity of digitalism: voice, power, money. As soon as public support for an official drops below the threshold, his state digital signature ceases to be valid, and the official cannot give orders, cannot redirect money flows, and therefore loses power. In this case, the data center automatically assigns a new election cycle.

The use of a decentralized cryptocurrency, as well as a radical reduction in the circulation of paper money, are prerequisites for the full functioning of digital democracy. At the same time, the use of a centralized digital currency (CBDC) is unacceptable. The problem is that the digital currency offered by state-owned banks is very easy to manage. For example, a state bank can turn off the possibility of payments between objectionable organizations or citizens or freeze all their savings. This can lead to the centralization of economic power in unscrupulous hands and the return of society to the “digital camp”.

The state cryptocurrency should have a mandatory digital footprint – something that paper money never had. Corruption with paper money is always possible, as because cash withdrawn for such purposes cannot be traced. However, if there is a digital footprint including all the information for each unit of currency on from whom and to whom it was paid, then it will not work to appropriate this money imperceptibly, because every transaction will be “labeled” .

It will therefore be impossible to finance illegal activities aimed at retaining power and maintain secret budget items in secret from the public.

A mandatory digital footprint is an admittedly radical step, and could affect the disclosure of state, commercial, and private secrets. Therefore, it may be necessary to encrypt this trace, and only the person who sent or received money will have access to it. Such a digital footprint can be formed using a digital signature, which could be accessed through the legal process is required.

The program code of the state cryptocurrency should be open, and the currency itself should be decentralized across all data centers. Cryptocurrency processing can be performed on the same data centers where the voting system will be located. Indeed, a combined platform for such data centers should be possible.

Digital Transition

To introduce digitalism, it will be necessary to amend the constitutions of states or develop new draft constitutions. Legislative bodies of states have the right to do so and the people, as the only source of power, can demand from the legislature to make such changes based on the principles of digital democracy.

A painless transition to digitalism is possible in fair elections if the candidate for the post of head of state designates digitalism as his strategy. If such a candidate wins, society has the right to demand from him the implementation of all the basic ideas of digital democracy.

In case of ignoring the demands of the people for the introduction of digital democracy, enterprising citizens need to start developing a platform for a continuous referendum for data centers to operate in parallel with existing paradigms.

The open source of the platform should make it available for download, analysis and installation by any citizen. The joint coordinated work of initiative citizens should lead to the emergence of a network of data centers that can start issuing digital signatures to all interested citizens.

Given the current curtailment of democratic freedoms, the development and launch of such a network may be subject to persecution by states, so its authors must be anonymous.

The launch and development of this network should give the citizens who join all the possibilities of digital democracy. Encrypted information within the network will not allow anyone to identify citizens and persecute them. It should be possible to prove a citizen’s participation in the network only by hacking his phone or mobile gadget.

Inside the platform, a digital analogue of the constitution of the state where it is deployed should be laid. This means that citizens will be able to start electing representatives to public office in parallel with the power that exists in their country.

The people, being the only source of power, will delegate the functions of governing the state to their new representatives.

It is possible that for reasons of personal security, at first, citizens will have to register under fictitious names. Under these names, they will be known to the rest of the network. The issuance of state digital signatures will also be in these names, as well as the authority to allocate the budget.

After all, what difference does it make what a citizen calls himself? The main thing is whether he keeps his promises and whether he spends the budget for the intended purpose for the benefit of the people. If a citizen does not cope or exceeds his authority, then he can always be removed from power.

The very existence of such a network and an increase in the number of citizens registering in it will mean a catastrophic decrease in the legitimacy of the current government. A decrease in turnout in elections organized by the old government will be a signal to everyone that the people are forming a new government already within the framework of digital democracy. All those who have not gone to the polls before can start participating in a continuous referendum. The lack of legitimacy of the old government will mean the non-binding implementation of its orders.

Digital democracy is impossible without cryptocurrency, therefore, together with the continuous referendum platform, it is necessary to develop and put into circulation a cryptocurrency that will work together with the data center platform.

Citizens can gradually switch to cryptocurrency settlements, refusing to use the currency of the state that keeps them in the “digital camp”. In order to have a budget that the new people’s deputies will be able to dispose of, it will be necessary to introduce taxes.

The larger the mass of cryptocurrency, the more real power the representatives of digital democracy will have. At some point, the old government will lose legitimacy and money so much that it will cease to function.

Digital democracy will win.

Key terms –

CBDC stands for Central Bank Digital Currency, in which your crypto-money wallet is held by a central bank which gives the state full control over the money of citizens and organizations.

Decentralized cryptocurrency means that your wallet with money is stored with you and no one else can control it.

A continuous referendum is a process in which citizens can independently react to the situation in their country and vote at the moment when they themselves consider it necessary. The continual referendum would rate the public support of those in power in real time and be used for both the election of representatives and their removal from power.

A state cryptocurrency is a hypothetical type of digital currency that combines decentralization with personal control of crypto-wallets, with the digital footprint required to track illegal transactions.