The idea of vote sizing is to enhance the way that elections are held by involving computers to adjust the size, or weight, of individual votes. When most of us think of voting, we think of voting for president, but this new kind of ballot counting can be put anywhere there are people who want to collectively make decisions - for example, in companies, in co-operatives, unions, schools, or various levels of government postings like mayors, etc.

First we need to address the feasibility of vote sizing - how can it be done with existing technology that is accessible to all. Vote sizing proposes the use of paper ballots with a perforated tear-off section (the voter's identifying information) and bar-codes which retain unique data about the voter (e.g. income) that is used as criteria in calculating the weight of a given ballot; the tear-off section of the ballot ensures the voter's anonymity so that the voter's private information is separated from their identifying information (such as name and address) when it is stuffed in the ballot box. When the voter has selected and marked their preference on the ballot, he or she simply tears away and discards the identifying section before depositing their ballot into the ballot box.

Then, using common and proven bar-code scanning technology, ballots are scanned, counted, and stored. This paper ballot method provides a way to re-count the ballots in case there is a disagreement on the outcome - the "paper trail".

The method of sizing votes that the vote sizing institute promotes is inversely to wealth (according to need) - in effect embracing the same computer technology that banks, politicians and the media use to control us, to instead empower us. But how do we calculate wealth? There are many ways that someone can be wealthy, whether it be through control of external wealth, personal assets, or income. For simplicity sake, we recommend using the net income found on income taxes to put on the bar codes.

The other question we need to ask is what kind of formula should we use to size the votes? If we stick to some kind of inversely to income formula (ignoring such ideas as favoring the higher-iqs, the wealthy, the biggest earners, the higher education, etc) then we're still left with the question of how the balancing of income and votes should be carried out. One method is using a formula for a simple arc, so that no one is any closer to or farther away from (0,0) as another. Another is to bring the gap between the rich and the poor into the equation. Another yet is to start everyone off at one vote and then work the way towards two votes for those who need it. In fact, there are probably thousands of creditable ways to size votes. The interesting thing is that now, on paper, each formula represents a clearly defined goal - to make everyone equal in their combined wealth/power, to shrink the gap between rich and poor, to help out those who need it the most, etcetera.

Vote sizing opens up a new world of social engineering to us. Already on the VoteSizing.org website are many polls, each trying to ask profound and deep questions, which also allow for voters to enter their income - and the results are charted using a variety of formulas. There is also an online vote sized learning engine which allows teachers to poll their students and chart the results in a variety of formulas based on the students grades. Additionally, there's an online vote flocking simulation which tries to re-create a community of worker / producer / earner / voter / investors, and experiment with different vote sizing formulas to try and discover how income / influence / production / satisfaction co-relate.

Human evolution has always been enabled and limited by the technology of the day. For example, the Romans did not possess the decimal counting system (the zero digit) which would have made counting large numbers of ballots very difficult or unfeasible. The Greeks had a relatively poor communication network so they would have difficulty including all the city states in their decision-making process. The industrial age lacked calculating machines that could have permitted large-scale tallying of votes. But at each epoch three factors come together: first, the ability of a society to harness more technology which secondly, enables more people to live together. Thirdly, with more stuff and more people living together and bumping into each other, the result is more conflict. Finally, the people use technology to develop more democracy in order to coexist peacefully.

As in the past, our society is currently experiencing a technological epoch requiring some kind of democratic reform. Thanks to information and manufacturing technology there has been an radical increase in the number of people living together, bringing conflict with it. The way out of this conflict is to increase the amount of democracy through vote sizing, or using computers to give weighted votes to those who need it (the poorer, working and middle-classes). Vote sizing is not just an option available to us to consider or excuse - it is inevitable. We need to think about how technology is going to affect us, to either serve our needs or hamper them. Vote sizing is at the cutting edge of this discussion.

Technological Frontiers