Global Voting, One Mobile at a Time

Voting, suggests Joel Marsden, shouldn't be a process that is confined just within national boundaries. "Could every man and woman on the planet have an equal voice and be part a global participatory process?" he asks. Joel believes that mobile phones could be an essential part of a global democracy.

Joel is the field director of World Vote Now, an organization that hopes to hold a "global human referendum" that would allow every person on the planet to vote. "What we're trying to do is create global direct democracy. The questions will be focused on key problems facing humanity," he told MobileActive. Joel said that questions would concern what he calls the "biggest problems facing humanity" -- health, access (education, investment, technology), and safety/security. The vote would result in a "popular mandate" that could be followed by groups such as the United Nations and World Bank. "It would be the first time that the people of the world would decide how the world should be run," he said. "The global democracy would strengthen the democratic process. The symbiotic relationship between [global and local democracy]...is fantastic."

World Vote Now is still in the testing stages of the project, trying to figure out what reliable and secure methods they could use that would accessible by diverse populations. Joel says that mobile voting is one of the methods that the group is considering. "When I first started, mobile technology was not at all prevalent. But today it's just mushroomed and ballooned, especially in developing countries," he said, noting that over 3 billion people have mobile phones in the world today. "Why can't a certain large portion of the population participate in a referendum through their handheld devices that are already hooked up?"

Although the group has done some tests of its satellite voting system, their plans for mobile voting are still in the incipient phases. World Vote Now has yet to address concerns such as security, voter registration, and how to confirm that each person only gets one vote. They also have yet to address technical considerations, although Joel suggested the voting could be done via SMS.

Eventually, the group hopes to publish the results of its studies and voting tests on the web, in book form, and as a film.

For more information, contact Joel Marsden at joel [at] worldvotenow [dot] com.