In the century of the Internet, in the age of electronic links, in our time of ubiquitous digital interconnectedness, representative democracy needs a serious update. And what better time to consider a revolution than July 4^th.

Independence Day is normally a time when we march around, extol our democracy, wave the flag and shoot off tons of fireworks. But perhaps we should once again take our revolution to heart, because we’ve got trouble, right here in our fair cities, and it starts with a capital T that rhymes with P that stands for Polls—the polls where we vote, that is.

An ever smaller percentage of the population is going to the polls because we’re disenchanted, disengaged, disheartened, dispirited, distraught and downright disgusted with the state of politics in what’s supposed to be the greatest democracy the world has ever known.

Of the twenty-four established democracies, voter turnout in the US is worse than all the rest save one—Switzerland. At the presidential level, voting has declined by 25 percent in the last 36 years: only 48.9 percent of eligible voters went to the polls in the last presidential election. As our democracy increasingly becomes an oligarchy, one wonders if our founding fathers, in their worst nightmares, ever thought that a majority of citizens wouldn’t vote.

Our elected officials, especially at state and national levels, are increasingly buying their way into office by courting big-money donors who help them purchase votes by advertising sound bites rather than by effectively debating issues. Politicians have become political CEOs who constantly seek new funding by protecting the rights of their shareholders, those who contributed money, rather than the rights of their consumers, those whom they were elected to represent.

In our political free market, decisions are increasingly being made based on surveys rather than leadership and consensus. Since most people don’t vote, a politician has a majority of voteless, voiceless masses that can be rallied quickly, if survey questions are carefully selected, in virtual support of almost any proposition, no matter how empty of common sense and full of self interest.

Is the situation hopeless? Is E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one) worth less than the money it’s printed on?

Certainly not! We’re Americans. We don’t give up. It’s the Fourth of July. We’ll find ways to increase democracy, and the Internet may be the critical element in effecting change.

Our representative democracy was created at a time when information traveled by horse at roughly 10 miles/hour. At the speed of light, information today travels 6,696,000 times faster than 224 years ago.

While we still need focused leadership as much today as we did in 1776, a strong argument for continued representative government, and while we don’t think any faster today than we did then, the increase in the rate at which information is exchanged combined with the full-duplex capabilities of the Internet means that for the first time in our history everyone in the US could vote when Congress votes. Not only could we have a situation in which the House and Senate would vote on a particular measure, but the people could vote at the same time and results could be tallied just as fast. Though the people’s vote would be advisory, we would have effectively created a tricameral legislature: Senate, House and People.

Of course this solution would work even more effectively at the local level. Gone would be those frustrating Council meetings during which speaker after speaker argues for or against a proposal only to have the Council leverage the great, voiceless majority when voting against what appears to be the consensus of the assembled. Since everyone in the community would be able to vote, there would be no doubt as to what the people believed. Democracy, good or bad, is what we’d have.

What would it cost? Those without computers would need voting appliances, like WebTV, that would attach to TVs. Secure software and servers would be maintained by each community. The costs would seem small given the potential societal benefits. (Our highly trained high school students would learn civics by helping to implement and maintain the system.)

Would we remain apathetic and not vote? No way! We’d jump at the chance to seriously participate in government. Should a representative attempt to appease a special interest, our votes would remind him who he’s representing. Gone would be our reliance on pollsters to tell us what we’re thinking. We would know. E Pluribus Unum would be rejuvenated.