Kantpoll is a free and open-source election management system guided by the following principles:
- Transparency - people should not be fooled or manipulated.
- Privacy - people should not fear being observed, measured and analyzed.
- Anonymity - which ensures that people will not be subjected to sanctions or reprimands.
- Security - protection of voters' data and communications.
- Decentralization - data about campaigns and candidates should not be subject to censorship.
- Internationalization - language should not be an obstacle to voter participation.
- Representativeness - technology should help to bring closer voters to candidates.
- Simplicity - everyone should be able to vote and every organization should be able to create a campaign.
- Scalability - which ensures that campaigns will be processed efficiently.
- Flexibility - there is no ideal format for a campaign, the code must be open to innovation.
On May 12, 2018, the Iraqis will choose their next representatives in what will be the fourth multiparty election after 2003. Fortunately, they are realizing that resolving conflicts through politics is the best way to avoid violence and chaos.
Meanwhile, in the West, people are losing the faith in democracy. As stated in this article:
Faith in democracy flares up in moments of triumph, such as the overthrow of unpopular regimes in Cairo or Kiev, only to sputter out once again. Outside the West, democracy often advances only to collapse. And within the West, democracy has too often become associated with debt and dysfunction at home and overreach abroad. Democracy has always had its critics, but now old doubts are being treated with renewed respect as the weaknesses of democracy in its Western strongholds, and the fragility of its influence elsewhere, have become increasingly apparent. Why has democracy lost its forward momentum?
We think that one of the reasons for this is the lack of innovation.
In the old days, in Athens, democracy was identified with sortition, a kind of lottery in which people were selected randomly to occupy public positions. The American Revolution brought us the modern representative democracy in the end of the 18th century. Little has changed since then in relation to the algorithm behind the selection of government officials.
There are differences between electoral systems. Some of them are comprehensible, for example, the two-round system in multiparty democracies. Other features of the electoral systems seem a bit arbitrary, such as the methods for allocating seats in parliament. Few of them, however, reflect the technological advances of the last decades.
As you know, technology has changed the way we communicate, the way we learn and work, but the way we vote remains virtually unchanged. Although, in some countries, people can vote from home, this is far from taking full advantage of widespread technologies. For most people, voting is a tedious and pro forma task.
Before Wikipedia, people would hardly believe that accurate and complete information could emerge from the cooperation of thousands of anonymous individuals on the Internet (link). Nowadays, we can find disbelief in the capacity of democracy to well organize society. This disbelief is common in countries like China, where its political and economic elite claims for more centralization and uniformity. (link) How can we show them the merits of our system when, even among us, there are serious concerns about the dysfunctionality of it?
Democracy has an advantage compared to centralized regimes. People like to know they have influence on the future of their communities and nations. Therefore, it is really sad when citizens, in democratic countries, feel unrepresented and ignored by their politicians.
We need open-source platforms to spillover innovation across democracies and to face the criticisms democracy rightly receives. Centralized regimes are investing in artificial intelligence, big data, and all sort of technologies available. Will democracies be stuck in the past?
Let's use technology to increase interest in politics among citizens, to encourage participation in elections, and to favor cooperation over conflict. We believe that all this is possible. The Kantpoll Project was created to champion transparency and representativeness in politics. We hope our contribution will help democracy thrive.