Instituto para el Voto Calibrado

If you’ve read through our issues section, you’ll know that due to a vast array of corruption breakdowns (tyranny, brutality, patronage and greed) things haven’t been copasetic for quite a long while. However, it’s not like this state of affairs is anything new. In fact, throughout our history there have been many times when people like you and me have had to stand up, right wrongs and wrestle the system back from the edge of insanity. It works in cycles: technology and democratic reforms improve things for a while and then (as we talk on the patronage page) the elite use technology to tip the scales back in their favor and everything slips back towards the corrupt old ways of before. At times these progressions are mind-boggling fast; at other times they’re painfully slow.

Technological Frontiers

Thankfully, the general tendency has been towards inclusion and representative democracies. But that doesn’t mean that the journey has been easy. Voting existed in different forms long before people stood in line at designated voting stations. Though Greek citizens cast beans well over two thousand years ago – giving them the competitive edge needed to trounce their enemies - their version of democracy was limited and rudimentary, as their technologies weren’t very advanced. During the dark and middle ages it took some time for technology to catch up with the democratic prerequisites of the informing, empowering and uniting the population. Even once the smoke and mud cleared during the Enlightenment, the use of the vote reemerged only after many groups of people shed a lot of blood and tears struggling for their rights. And as we’ve seen in the tyranny page, the fight for numerous others is still not over.

In each case, it’s been the will of the people who’ve pushed through the reforms, but it’s been the technology of the times which have determined what the reforms would look like, and just how far evolution of social organization could go. For example: Caste-based systems worked well for a long time to divide up property and responsibilities, but then with the implementation of money to expand social connections, a new way of organization was needed. The threat of riotous mobs and the punishment of eternal damnation was enough to keep the nobility in check for a while, but with the onset of the industrial age a more refined method to keep leaders accountable was demanded. As each technological age built upon the previous ones, so did the evolution of democratic ideals.

[no-glossary] Language → Private Property[/no-glossary]

Democracy goes as far back as the nomadic tribes, who were able to create systems of ownership, rights, and regulated voting once they learned to communicate with each other and other tribes - eventually allowing them to distinguish communal vs. private property and settle into large agricultural imperial communities.

[no-glossary] Writing → Rule of Law[/no-glossary]

The concept of a truly vibrant institutional democracy, however, began in the Ancient Greek city-states; as they pursued technological advancements in the written word, mathematics and geometry in order to maximize their sharing of resources, establish a legal infrastructure based on legal documents and arguments, and give the citizens a personal stake in the affairs of the state.

[no-glossary] Currency → Wage Labor[/no-glossary]

Greece was the largest democracy in its day, but still puny in size compared to its successor the Roman Republic, which stretched for thousands of miles over oceans and mountains. It was Rome’s standardized coinage, handmade paper, bureaucracy, and cutting edge postal communications network that enabled the Empire to spread far and wide while embracing some kind of citizenry contribution through paid labor. The Roman coin became a very efficient mechanism of democratic advancement, providing a means by which people thousands of miles apart could work together, reach a consensus and agree on important decisions based on the value of things (like new roads, bathhouses, arenas, aqueducts and garrisons).

[no-glossary] Printing Press → Representation[/no-glossary]

The medieval societies that emerged in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire took the love of writing to a new level by using handmade paper to document a comprehensive set of written codes of conduct (religious, charters, doctrinal, constitutional, fables and otherwise) and for accounting and tax collection. But it was the invention of the printing press that really launched democratic reforms across Europe and America. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, for example, sold 600,000 copies in America (a country with a population of only 3 million) prior to the American Revolution. The ability to disseminate revolutionary ideas in print form to a wide audience facilitated the growth of grassroots movements and transparency; and got more and more people demanding to somehow be openly represented by government.

[no-glossary] Industry → Vote[/no-glossary]

Eventually, simply reading about the workings of the government no longer satisfied most people; the industrial age saw increasing demand for every voice to be heard. Vast lines of instant communication, production, and gratification fueled the demand for more instant representation, and the idea of everyone getting at the minimum a vote came into being to unite the population and ease pressure.

[no-glossary] Computers → Vote Tabulating[/no-glossary]

The most recent technological evolution has been the invention and wide distribution of global computer networks which have united us as a species, given each of us a soapbox to preach from, and pushed us into direct competition with each other. At the same time, the technology available to us now will allow us to bridge the obvious and offensive gap between democratic stages – the gap between the use of votes and wage labor.

So while the democratic principle has been around for a long, long time, it should come as no surprise to find that the idea of vote sizing hasn’t even been considered until now – because in the past people simply didn’t have the technology to frame the discussion in absolutes. It would have been as difficult for them as it would be for us to now to conceive what society may need after a century of vote sizing.

Previous and Existing Vote Sizing Implementations

(Under construction).

Bring It On: The Vote Sizing Revolution

At the edge of each democratic frontier, voting philosophies and methods are often surrounded by the classic tug-of-war struggle between the masses and the elite. But despite the hard road to freedom, people around the world have fought and continue to fight for their right to control their own destinies. Vote sizing fits into this cycle by bringing back the old spirit of democratic reform – by making our votes once again count for something.

Getting a vote is not the first step – getting the proper technology in place is. But getting a vote is not the last step either – because in order for that vote to be a vehicle of democracy it has to be delivered of a person’s own free will; it has to be fairly accounted for; there must be access to information; there must be some kind of written constitution in place to provide a framework; and the vote must count.

In the days before computers (I’m showing my age here...) votes were written on paper ballots, dropped in ballot boxes, and counted manually. Income information, at the time, was recorded at tax department offices. Even if it had been feasible to bring income records to where they counted votes, it would have been impossible to size each vote by hand – and income information, considered very private by most people – would have been available to any ballot-counting official.

But computers will allow us to size votes easily according to any algorithm we choose, and they will allow income information to be attached to a person’s vote without risking the loss of that private information.

Now that you’ve read this page, hopefully you see how vote sizing is not only possible, but appropriate. We have the technology to implement it and we are at the stage in our evolution that demands it. The next question put to us regards the fine tuning of specifically how to use it. For that, read on to our next page where we look at different vote sizing formulas.