Foundations of e-Democracy1

Ehud Shapiro
Department of Computer Science & Applied Math
Weizmann Institute of Science
Rehovot, Israel
ehud.shapiro@weizmann.ac.il

ABSTRACT E-democracy has at least two meanings: (i) Using the

Internet to strengthen real-world democracies[1, 5] and
The Internet revolution of democracy, which will (ii) Democratic conduct of virtual Internet
transform earthly representative democracies by communities[6]. When viewed as objectives they
employing the communication and collaboration coalesce, as one entails or requires the other.
capabilities of the Internet, has yet to come. Here, we Amalgamating “Internet” and “Democracy” presupposes
enlist the wisdom of our forefathers to lead the way. By
universal Internet access as well as net neutrality and
consulting the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and
of the Citizen, we distill core values of democracy and freedom; their absence undermines the legitimacy of e-
derive from them requirements for the foundations of democracy, as a regime can exclude an oppressed
e-democracy. Building these foundations can usher the minority, or a service provider can make e-democracy a
urgently-needed revolution of democracy. super-premium service, excluding the poor.
Even if the Internet infrastructure is universally
1 INTRODUCTION accessible, neutral and fair, utilizing an existing Internet
Representative democracy is in retreat world-wide[1-3], application such as Facebook and its siblings as a
as many democracies transform into oligarchies, foundation for e-democracy is a non-starter: They are
plutocracies or even kleptocracies. A key reason is lack prone to duplicate and fake accounts and, crucially, to
of respect to democracy’s basic tenet – equality of rights nondemocratic oversight, control and arbitrary
– as the rich, the powerful and the connected intervention by their owners. Even Wikipedia, a
increasingly dominate who gets nominated, who gets hallmark of Internet participation, is governed neither by
elected and what the elected do. The forefathers of its readers nor by its editors, but by an appointed board
democracy have identified this to be “...the sole cause of that has full legal authority to shut it down, e.g. to avert
public calamities and of the corruption of bankruptcy.
governments.”[4] Hence, new foundations for e-democracy are needed. We
The Internet, on the other hand, is revolutionizing envision these foundations to simultaneously support
industry after industry, leaving older ways of human the democratic conduct of all types of communities:
conduct in the dustbin of history. Yet, it has not changed Associations, clubs, unions, cooperatives, organizations,
the basic workings of democracy: Representative movements, and political parties; and at all levels – local,
democracy today functions essentially as it did two national, transnational, and international; eventually
hundred years ago (Internet-enabled disruptions of including cities, states and federations; and, ultimately,
elections notwithstanding). uniting the entire humanity in a global e-democracy.
How could this be? How come an Internet revolution of Among these communities, the pivot for revolutionizing
democracy has not happened yet, despite the pressing earthly democracies may be Internet-resident
need for it and the apparent clear ability of the Internet democratic political parties, or e-parties. Only by
to deliver it? I believe a key reason is that amalgamating winning real-world elections, e-parties can export the
“Internet” and “Democracy” into an Internet democracy, participatory practices of e-democracy from their inner
or e-democracy, is harder than it seems. workings to real-world governments, enacting

1 To appear in Communications of the ACM

 Foundations of e-Democracy Ehud Shapiro

legislation that gradually supplants traditional freedom to take any action that is not harmful to others.
representative democracy by e-democracy. Among those implied freedoms we note the freedom of
But what are these foundations? Who could guide us in assembly[7], granting any group of people the freedom
their construction? A standard method in requirements to assemble, and the subsidiary principle, granting
engineering is to interview the prospective customer. such a group the freedom to make decisions that pertain
The prospective “customer” for e-democracy is humanity to them.
at large. Hence, in lieu of an interview, we enlist one of 4. Transparency: A14-15 require that the conduct of
humanity’s most inspiring documents: The 1789 French public agents and the collection and expenditure of
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen[4] public funds be transparent. Furthermore, A2 states that
(Henceforth: Declaration), which offers a concise, clear the goal of any political association must be the
and bold expression of the essence of democracy. We conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of
study its Articles, extract from them core democratic man: liberty, property, safety and resistance against
values, and derive from these values requirements for oppression. This can be ascertained in an ecosystem of
the foundations of e-democracy. e-democracies only if the decisions of each are
transparent to the others.
2 CORE VALUES OF DEMOCRACY 5. Property and Privacy: A17 recognizes the right for
We list core democratic values extracted from the property and its private use, which, extended to our
Articles (marked by A) of the Declaration (Interpreting times, incorporates the right for the ownership and
Man→ Person, Citizen→Member, and privacy of information. The right to safety and resistance
Nation→Community): against oppression (A2) entails voter privacy to resist
1. Sovereignty: The Declaration’s Article III (A3) states coercion.
that “The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially 6. Justice: Revolt against unjust rulers was crucial to the
in the Nation. No body, no individual can exert authority emergence of democracy, and justice is the focus of early
which does not emanate expressly from it.” We interpret charters of democracy such as the English Magna
this principle to mean that the members of an e- Carta[8] and the French Declaration. Indeed, A1 and A4-
democracy are its sovereign. 13 address the equal and just conception, application
2. Equality: A1 states that “Men are born and remain and enforcement of the law. Furthermore, A16 states
free and equal in rights. …”. Together with A3 they imply that a constitution is needed to guarantee the rights of
that sovereignly must be equally shared, often stated as citizens and the separation of the powers of government.
one person – one vote. But there is more to equality than
the right to vote. A4 states that the law is the expression 3 REQUIREMENTS OF FOUNDATIONS OF E-DEMOCRACY
of the general will and that all people have the right to We now aim to derive from these core democratic values
contribute to its formation; and equally so, according to requirements for the foundations of e-democracy.
A1. A6 further states that all people, being equal in the 1. Sovereignty: Internet communities today, from the
eyes of the law, are equally admissible to all public posts. local bulletin board to almighty Facebook, are dictatorial,
Equality extends not only to rights but also to with an omnipotent administrator who determines who
obligations: A12–14 ascertain the need for public gets in, who is thrown out and what actions may each
services and for equally sharing their financing among member take. The administrator also has the capacity to
members, but progressively, according to their ability to shut down the community and annihilate its recorded
pay. history at will. Furthermore, communities like Facebook
To summarize, all members of a democracy must have employ rule-by-decree like bygone Middle Ages
equal capacity to act as voters, discussants, proposers fiefdoms. The owner, like a feudal lord, sets the rules
and public delegates, as well as share progressively the (sometimes in secrecy), tries members for breaching
burden of public expenditures. them and executes the punishment. The members, like
3. Freedom: A1 states that “men are born and remain serfs, toil for the financial benefit of the lord while having
free”. The nature of this freedom is further elaborated in no (intellectual) property, civil rights, or voting rights.
other articles: A10-11 espouse the freedom of They have no say on their remuneration or tax, on
expression within the limits if the law. A5 proclaims the community rules of conduct or their enforcement, or on

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Foundations of e-Democracy

the election of community leadership. In the event of a The economy of a democratic cryptocurrency could be
bankruptcy or hostile takeover, the entire community programmed with democratically instituted taxes and
and its recorded history may be annihilated, with budgets (e.g., [11, 12]) to operate the e-democracy.
community members being helpless bystanders. All this In summary, a distributed public ledger employing a
clearly violates all of democracy’s core values – democratic cryptocurrency and programmed to adhere
sovereignty, equality, freedom, transparency, property, to democratic control could ensure that the members of
privacy and justice. an e-democracy are its sovereign and owner.
First, we consider the question of ownership. Any 2. Equality: Equality entails one person – one vote. Yet e-
seemingly sovereign e-democracy that resides on democracies consist of digital identities, not people.
computers operated by a third party could be unplugged Requiring one digital identity – one vote is not enough, as
at its will, or its default, rendering sovereignty most existing systems allow a person to create as many
meaningless. Hence, in the context of an e-democracy, digital identities as one wishes.
sovereignty requires ownership. To support equality in an e-democracy, a new notion of
How can the members of an e-democracy be the digital identity must be devised that is truthful, unique,
sovereign and hence necessarily the owner? Advances in persistent, and owned by the person it represents.
cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology provide the Otherwise, if fake – the owner may vote on behalf of a
first example. In a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous non-existent person; if non-unique – the owner may cast
Organization)[6], built on top of Ethereum, the multiple votes; if not persistent – the owner may
dictatorial system administrator is replaced by a smart terminate and shed an obligated identity and acquire a
contract, namely an autonomous, incorruptible, fresh one clear of obligations, eluding accountability; and
transparent and persistent software agent, programmed if not owned by the person it represents – it grants its
to obey democratic decisions (albeit with one coin – one owner an extra vote at the expense of the person it
vote, not one person – one vote). The DAO operates on a represents.
distributed computer network with no central While truthfulness is a common requirement, e.g. in
ownership. A few caveats: First, an early DAO venture credit card and mobile phone contracts, uniqueness and
capital fund had a bug that allowed a malicious member persistency are not, as a person may obtain numerous
to syphon its funds. Smart-contract programming in credit cards, mobile phones and email accounts and
general and the DAO architecture in particular have yet terminate them at will. Government-issued identity
to mature to offer a sound foundation for e-democracy. numbers, often complemented with biometric attributes
Second, Ethereum and Bitcoin, while having distributed and incorporated in digital identity cards (cf. e-Estonia,
control in theory, have a core group of miners that could India’s Aadhaar) may serve as a unique and persistent
control and subvert them should they decide to join digital identity attribute.
forces, a risk that a future e-democracy at the national or However, e-democracies may transcend national
global scale cannot afford. Third, current proof-of-work boundaries, e.g. in regional and international
consensus protocols of public blockchains incentivize organizations. Realizing equality in global e-
inconceivable and unsustainable waste of energy, which democracies is a bigger challenge: First, unhindered
cannot be endorsed by any moral person or organization. Internet access should be a recognized basic civil right
Fourth, a replicated ledger such as Ethereum and and be provided universally. Second, some people,
Blockchain could not support the high-throughput notably refugees, may have no verifiable national
transaction rate and response time required by a identity, yet should be granted participation in a global
national or global e-democracy; a distributed ledger e-democracy. Third, people may have multiple
architecture is needed. Fifth, to foster participation citizenships, and without an additional notion of “global
rather than greed, a democratic cryptocurrency should citizenship” with an associated globally-unique digital
reward participation[9], rather than capital-intensive identity, one may have multiple votes, violating equality.
coin-mining; the globally-unique digital identities Fourth, malicious nondemocratic regimes may produce
required for e-democracy, discussed below, may afford an arbitrary number of fake national identities and use
egalitarian cryptocurrency mining[9, 10]. them (in a Sybil attack[13]) to sway the vote of a global
e-democracy in favor of their national interest.

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 Foundations of e-Democracy Ehud Shapiro

A trustworthy notion of global citizenship; a mechanism democracies simultaneously, analog to jail time in the
to endow each global citizen with a truthful, persistent real world, may be severe indeed. But for such a
and globally-unique global digital identity; and a global punishment to be effective, accountability must be
judiciary empowered to revoke fake or duplicate global ensured: it is not sufficient that the offending digital
digital identities and to transfer stolen identities back to identity be truthful; it has to be unique and persistent,
their rightful owners, as well as to prosecute the lest the offender sheds the punishment by abandoning
perpetrators of these crimes, are all needed to ensure one identify in favor of another.
equality in a global e-democracy. 7. Hysteresis: Democracy’s forefathers have not
3. Freedom: As freedom of expression is granted foreseen the immediacy with which the general will can
within the limit of the law, its realization requires a be ascertained on the Internet. Eventually, the general
constitution that determines these limits and a judiciary will must prevail lest we violate sovereignty. But it
that enforces them, discussed below. Freedom of should go through reasonable checks and balances until
assembly can by realized by a software architecture that it does, lest mob dynamics prevail. To this end we enlist
allows the unhindered formation of one e-democracy hysteresis, a characteristic of systems in which the
within another. To uphold the subsidiary principle, output is not an immediate function of the input.
each subsidiary democracy should be able to undertake While a multi-year election cycle confers natural
decisions that pertain to it, within the law. hysteresis on earthly democracies, e-democracies
4. Transparency: The structure of an e-democracy, its require hysteresis to be engineered, so that swings in
rules of conduct, its underlying technology, the source people’s opinions may not immediately result in
code of its software, as well as the decisions of its decisions that accommodate such swings. Example are
communities, the actions of its public delegates and its minimal periods for proposal making and deliberation;
finances must all be transparent to all. (We acknowledge minimal endorsements for proposals to be considered;
that in an extreme scenario, resisting an oppressive minimal quorum for a decision to be binding; and special
regime may necessitate compromised transparency.) majority needed for certain actions, e.g. change of
5. Property & Privacy: The ownership of private data constitution.
and its measured disclosure to third parties only as
needed can be supported with self-sovereign 4 CONCLUSIONS
identities[14]. Ensuring privacy of voters and avoiding It is my opinion that representative democracies are in
coercion require advanced cryptographic techniques dire straits because of their failure to uphold core
such as anonymous credentials[15] and coercion- democratic values, notably equality and transparency,
avoidance. and that e-democracy may offer the only feasible
6. Justice and Accountability: To advance from the remedy. We have derived requirements for the
Internet Middle Ages and supplant Internet fiefdoms foundations of e-democracy from the 1789 French
with e-democracies, we must offer justice – a democratic Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The
mechanism for establishing fair law and order. Its next urgent step is to build such foundations so that the
components must be a constitution, subject to desperately-needed Internet revolution of
democratic amendment, and a democratically-elected representative democracy would commence.
judiciary that rules according to the constitution.
e-democracies will come under criminal attack through ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
identity forgery and theft, voter coercion, Ehud Shapiro is the incumbent of the Harry Weinrebe
misinformation, hate crimes, and other offences. They Chair of Computer Science and Biology. Thanks to Ofir
can be redressed by the judiciary via a public warning, Raz, Amos On, Luca Cardelli, Jeffrey Sachs, Stan Letovsky,
public condemnation, temporary gag, and fines. As Yaniv Erlich, Benny Daon, Shani Gershi, Nimrod Talmon,
suspension or, worse, expulsion, violate the basic civil Ariel Procaccia, Liav Orgad and Raffaele Marchetti for
right to vote, it may be considered too extreme. Imagine discussions and helpful comments and to Michal Golan-
a future in which a person is a member of multiple e- Mashiach and Ouri Poupko for their help.
democracies, which have a joint judicial system. A
temporarily limit on participation in all these REFERENCES

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Foundations of e-Democracy

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