We are working to develop a nonpartisan electronic democracy system than combines regular polling, voter education and voter chosen delegates to hold our representatives more accountable and to make our government more responsive. Please send feedback at http://democracygps.org.

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Algorithmic Democracy:
The Time Is Now
Chris Krenn, Ph.D.
5/5/19
Copyright © 2019 by Christopher Krenn
democracygps.org
chris <at> democracygps.org
Project

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>70% polled “disapprove of
how Congress is handling its
job” [pollingreport.com, 2016; CNN, 2014]
Voting rates have not
changed much in 100 years
[fairvote.com, 2016; electproject.org, 2014]
Polarization is
increasing, but
there is still a
large population
of moderates
[Pew, 2014]
Project
U.S. voters are frustrated, but have not
yet given up or irreversibly polarized

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Every citizen (age 10 and up) regularly completes a survey
of their political views, legislative goals, and positions on
current issues
Every user chooses decision-making delegates for national,
state, and local issues
Algorithms will dynamically monitor agreement between
users and their delegates
Algorithms will predict voter support for current legislation
Algorithms will produce outlines of new legislation with
support of broad majorities
Our vision:
Proposal

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Prototype
Representative
Democracy
Direct democracy
Your Algorithmic Democracy Account
Summary
Political Views (from Pew people-press.org)
S.D. D. A. S.A. (Strongly Disagree; Disagree; Agree; Strongly Agree)
x Government is almost always wasteful and inefficient
x Good diplomacy is the best way to ensure peace
Legislative goals
Fair, equitable, and transparent taxes
Zero deficit in 5 years
Delegates
Economy
Rand Paul( )/Elizabeth Warren(x)/None( ); (82% Alignment - How?)
Education
Marshall Tuck(x)/Tom Torlakson( )/None( ); (76% Alignment - How?)
State, County, City, National Issues Convention
Current Issues
Environment
Support( )/Oppose( )/Neutral(x): Oil drilling in Alaska's ANWR
Climate Change
Support(x)/Oppose( )/Neutral( ): comprehensive carbon tax
Upcoming votes
Your political views and delegation predict the following positions for you:
Support(predicted-Why?)/Oppose(override): S.744 - Border Security, Economic
Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act. (Details: Balanced background;
Support(override)/Oppose(predicted-Why?): H.R.5759 - Preventing Executive
Overreach on Immigration Act of 2014. (Details: Balanced background;
Arguments pro; Arguments con)
Opt-in system will be
validated with high
quality random polling
and include elements
of deliberative
democracy

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Possible issues for discussion and consensus:
surveillance cameras, government transparency,
electronic voting, or others
Development steps:
Step 1: Finish software deployment
Step 2: Apply to Piedmont issues
Step 3: 100 students on 10 university campuses;
city or state initiative
Extend open-source code and
apply to real political issues
Plan
Following computer security best
practices will be vital to our success

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It documents differences between the voters’ will and
government actions
It enables better laws to be proposed and passed
It will pressure members of government to support the
interests of all of their constituents
Benefits could include immigration, criminal justice,
education & tax reform
Algorithmic democracy can evolve into a self-supporting
non-profit by transparently selling access
Algorithmic democracy will benefit
the user, government, & society
Profit
No existing platform solves all these problems

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Algorithmic democracy will enable compromise,
influence elections, and should lead to better laws and
less waste
Government is too big and important
to be left to the politicians [C. Bowles]
➔
➔
I am an engineer, and I want to help
Precedent

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References
Adhocracy: https://adhocracy.de
Chester Bowles:
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/1253.html
Brigade: https://www.brigade.com/
CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/09/politics/cnn-
poll-congress/
Countable: https://www.countable.us/
DeliberativeDemocracy: http://cdd.stanford.edu/: it
must achieve political equality, its decisions must
embody deliberation, and it must avoid tyranny of the
majority
DemocracyOS: http://democracyos.org
ElectProject: http://www.electproject.org/2014g
FairVote: http://www.fairvote.org/research-and-
analysis/voter-turnout/
Flux: https://github.com/voteflux/
Gentzkow:
https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/Polariz
ationIn2016.pdf
LiquidFeedback: http://liquidfeedback.org/
NationBuilder: http://nationbuilder.com
Pew: http://www.people-
press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-
american-public/
PollingReport:
http://www.pollingreport.com/CongJob.htm
VerifiedVoting:
https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/internet-
voting/vote-online/ (need for valid, private, coercion
resistant, & auditable voting)
WeThePeople: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/
WhatsGoodly: https://whatsgoodly.com/

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Traditional direct democracy demands too much time and
attention from the voter and doesn’t scale
brigade.com and countable.us are private firms which lack
transparency and don’t respect the users’ time
Democracy.earth is a non-profit aiming to develop a
“decentralized democratic governance protocol”
It does not emphasize the importance of broad
deliberative discussion or of collecting users’ opinions as
well as votes
We may be duplicating unknown systems
What’s new here?
Appendix
We are proposing a fresh and agile approach
to make useful and user-friendly tools

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Needs to be constrained by budget and by law
Needs to be robust to activists from the far left and
right, protect minorities, manage privacy concerns, and
maintain “one citizen one vote”
Apply demographic weighting
Learn from professional pollsters and Scantegrity
Needs broad participation
A transparent and algorithmic democracy
system will face many challenges

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[Gentzkow, 2016]
Political ideology has not shifted
much in 45 years
Political Ideology, 1970-2015

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Budget: $22M/$23M
maximum
10 projects; 5040
budget options
Proof of Principle: Computer optimized
budget allocation can satisfy more voters
Optimization balances cost and importance

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Chris Krenn is a computational physicist and
metallurgist working near San Francisco since 2001 and
has been exploring electronic democracy systems since
2013. He has a B.S. from Yale and a Ph.D. from U.C.
Berkeley.
About the author