Aaaaaaaaand… what if this OpenID was used for elections and voting? The internet is the silver bullet that democracy has been waiting for since it’s very conception. Voter suppression? Forget about it when every man, woman, and child can vote via their cell phone. End the constant issues and questions of voter identification… because you can always just ask for more information to verify. (scan your finger print, take a selfie, snap a pic of your Driver’s License.. ) Conveniently, many cell phones also have fingerprint scanning technology.. Also not to mention a unified voting system would allow unprecedented and complete transparency. (Not sure if your vote was counted? Look it up. We can allow each person to set whether they want their vote public or private, and all public votes will be view able online by anyone.) We can let the people verify ourselves. It’s our vote. It needn’t be so difficult to collect 1 piece of information from 80–90% of the population.

Also , aside— I think the reason we have so much political theater as opposed to political dialog is because voter turnout is so chronically low. Just looking at the numbers it’s obvious to everyone that a more effective strategy is activating voters that already side with you rather than swaying voters to your opinions. We can rant about it all we want, but it’s just good business.

Anyways — totes agree. Having a unified public profile could restore the fabric of our democracy. Beyond that, all this info could also be used for all other government services, like the DMV, etc. I think we’re at a point where the vast majority of bureaucracy and administration of government could be replaced entirely by technology systems or frameworks, or automated out entirely. (Imagine if all the laws in the US were available on a wikipedia-like framework. The supreme court are the super-admins, lower courts are mostly moderators etc, and everyone is free to discuss laws and punishments — and flag some as unjust. New laws could be suggested, and amendments to laws could be voted on, etc.)