Some aspects of Electronic Democracy (like Communism, Catholicism, etc. a religion, and thus the capital letters): * We have quite a lot of it now. The mass media (CNN, newspapers, call-in radio, etc.) is "the fourth branch of government". We can send billions of pieces of junk e-mail, faxes, or voice messages to the White House and Congresscritters if we like, and they can send junk mail back. * As long as we have it, it's a good idea to at least try to provide information to the voter, so I support this bill. Cypherpunks might find some of this information useful. However, I am under no illusions that a significant fraction of voters will bother to access or read the information to any significant degree. * A basic problem with E.D. is that nobody has an incentive to vote correctly. People's political opinions can be as stupid and wrong as can be and it won't have any negative impact on their own lives, or at least none that is disproportionate or easily recognized to be a result decisions based on that opinion. Other people might have great opinions, which if implemented would solve world hunger, clean up the environment, grow the economy, etc. etc. but there is no special benefit to these people for having done their altruistic homework and arrived at effective solutions to these problems. This is not only reflected in the fact that less than half the people vote in many elections, but also in the fact that only a miniscule fraction of those who do vote know what the hell they are voting on. Including me, BTW: this isn't an elitist issue of "the masses are asses", but the fact that most of the important problems and decisions require in-depth knowledge based on years of experience, not the flipping of levers based on a few minutes per week of video clips. Contrast to the much more effective tools we have to make social decisions in a free market: what to make, what to use, what to buy, what to sell, how to be of service to other people what services to choose, etc. Good decisionmaking processes have negative feedback loops so that good opinions or decisions tend to clearly and quickly reward the decisionaker, and vice versa, and tend to benefit or harm the decisionmaker disproportionately to innocent bystanders (people making decisions about other aspects of society). The market's feedback is by no means perfect! That is why I am hyped about systems to make the feedback more effective, like the recently discussed auditing protocol, and the cypherpunks movement which I hope will free some people and markets from abusive, coercive control by those who (a) do not have our best interests at heart, and (b) have no incentive to do the homework needed to make good decisions. Regardless of how cypherpunks feel about this issue, E.D. is one of the most powerful memes making its way thru current society, and we have to deal with it. Nick Szabo szabo@netcom.com