Greg's Corner

Democracy 2.0: Please share this video

Rather than getting on YouTube and simply complaining about the outcome of the election, tech influencer Shereef Bishay has come up with a plan that he feels will not only give everyday citizens direct representation in congress but our opinions will actually matter. In his YouTube video entitled ‘Upgrading our democracy’ Mr. Bishay refers to democracy as an operating system that is in desperate need of an upgrade.

In his plan Mr. Bishay suggests there should be a web portal where we vote on the issues facing congress today that go straight to our representatives. However, if we don’t want to vote on every issue we can give our votes to proxies who can vote on our behalf. The example that Mr. Bishay gives is that you can give your vote to the Sierra Club if you care about environmental issues.

The problem is that our current representation are more beholden to lobbyists and special interest groups rather than their constituents and can vote on issues any way they see fit. Mr Bishay has a suggestion for that as well. He believes that there should be an internet candidate to congress who should be legally bound to vote as the way the constituents he or she represents have voted. He suggests we should have these internet candidates in all congressional races until all the old guard is removed and the new system is patched, as he calls it.

He does into more detail in his video below and would like to see his video shared on Facebook at least 1000 times before he puts in money himself then starts a Kickstarter campaign to get the ball rolling. Please watch the reasonably short video in its entirety.

Are there flaws in Mr. Bishay’s plan, of course there are. There are flaws in almost any plan, and there are definitely too many flaws in the way today’s political system works. We’ve been using the same form of representation for over 200 years and our technology has vastly surpassed that system. Isn’t it time to bring the two on par?

Please share Mr. Bishay’s video today.