Online voting is worth doing right
A recent post arguing against the proposed online voting amendment in Boston DSA raises the valid and important question, “what kind of privilege should our voting system favor?” The current system favors the privilege required to be present and available for in-person votes. The argument against points out that online voting could be susceptible to the privilege of online access and social capital:
While the amendment purports to enfranchise those unable to attend GMs and boost participation in our processes, we believe the change privileges those who have the most leisure time to post their thoughts and opinions online over the course of a seven day period as well as those with the technological and social media savvy to participate effectively in online forums. People with greater levels of social capital — especially social capital dispensed online — will wield disproportionate power. At our in-person meetings we utilize a progressive stack precisely to avoid the dominating of discourse by a person or persons. It will be increasingly difficult to apply this strategy to the discourse of an online platform.
This is an entirely valid concern, but as that very post (and this response) shows, it applies equally to the current system, only now it is compounded by the privilege of being able to vote in person as well. Debate and discussion over this amendment will no doubt occur online for the week between now and the formal vote, and the disproportionate influence of online social capital and sectarian strife the previous post warns of will no doubt manifest. The only difference is that, in the absence of online voting, only those available from 1–3 on 9/15 will be able to actually make the decision. I think it is also worth asking what the Venn diagram of these privileges looks like: Are the people with online social capital and the time to contribute disproportionately to the discourse different from those that can attend the meeting?
The concerns are valid, but in my opinion better addressed by examining modifications to the online debate and voting procedures than scrapping the idea and losing the enfranchisement and expansion of democratic decision-making that it offers. I have already suggested an amendment for an implementation wherein the actual voting procedure involves presenting summaries of online and in person discussions prior to the ability to actually make the vote. As in a meeting conducted under RRO and using progressive stack, this ensures that voters have been presented with complete and thought-out arguments both for and against a proposal before voting on it.
We can also rethink how those online discussions are carried out. The previous post assumes that the discussions will essentially be exactly what is happening at this very moment in their post and my own and on slack and twitter, but now with voting attached to it. I don’t think it would be easy or reasonable to suppress these informal discussions, but we could also create a formal online discussion structure similar to the RRO and progressive stack structure of our in-person meetings but stretched out in time. For example, and there is room to develop this proposal, arguments are submitted in “rounds”, pro and con, with preference given to publishing arguments from members that have not yet had their positions presented to the group. This is easily accomplished with a Google form. Then, for presenting the materials, we could use a curated slack channel, medium, blog, loomio, or wiki posts, and email digests summarizing N positions on each side (the problem of what media platforms reach what members is also relevant, so the best option is probably to hit as many of them at once as we can). This would place new burdens on the hellections team, mods, the comms committee, and/or a new team built for this purpose. For me personally, I’m willing to put in the extra work to ensure that as many members as possible can participate in the decision making process without simply shifting the locus of privilege. And yes, that is a commitment: If we approve online voting with a system of online debate that requires human intervention, I volunteer.