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Chapter 7
 The Characteristics of and Requirements for the Demos

In order for an electorate constituted of all of us to function as a political whole, as a single body within a demos, and for the current consensus of the electorate to serve as society’s social contract, the demos would need to have certain characteristics and to meet certain requirements:

  • Physically the demos would consist of a nationwide, electronic, always-on, real-time voting system. Taken together, the hardware, software, function, and process constituting the system should have three main characteristics: convenience, simplicity, and security.
  • The issues that the electorate participating in the demos voted on would be few, simple, and those most fundamental or relevant to the formation of a social contract the content of which sets some parameters within which our nation must function.
  • Each voter would have a vote actively riding at every moment on each issue in the demos which would be repeatedly summed with all other votes on each issue producing an ever-current consensus on each issue. A voter would be able to change one or more votes at any time at his or her pleasure. It would be a requirement that the voter recast his or her vote on each issue, either confirming each vote as is or changing one or more votes, at least once each calendar year.
  • Every of-age, mentally-competent citizen would have to be a member of the demos electorate. Being a member of the demos electorate could not be a privilege but would have to be a civic obligation. Participation should bring significant reward, and non-participation should bring significant penalty.
  • The electorate of the demos would practice a new kind of democracy called consensus democracy which will be defined and described later.
  • The demos would serve both as the means for voting on issues included in the demos and as the predominant place to study and debate the included issues.
  • The demos would not be a full but a limited democracy which operates within constraints.

Each item in this list will be discussed at length in the chapters that follow.

 

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