On Monday December 19 the 538 members of the Electoral College meet in 51 locations to confirm the election of the 45th President of the United States. In recent decades the roll of the Electoral College has been mostly ceremonial. However, the Founding Fathers actually designed the Electoral College to be part of the Checks and Balances designed into the Constitution. Even as they wrote the Constitution, there were many concerns about the potential for foreign interference, malicious mischief, or irrational candidates that may result in an extraordinary circumstance where the election results would need to be confirmed by a body of appointed citizen officers. The rules, duties, and purpose of the Electoral College are minimally specified.
Prior to 2016, having the Electors meet in their own states made collaboration on election concerns difficult to manage. With the advent of Social Network collaboration platforms, the Electoral College can act as a parliamentary body, holding debates and votes before the final elections.
In 2016, the elected candidate, Donald Trump, has been accused of many behaviors that disqualify him from office, including:
- Being influenced by foreign entities,
- Being engaged in profiteering activities in conflict of interest with the nation,
- Behaving irrationally by claiming “false facts” are true to justify behavior, such as claiming that the murder rate has gone up 40% when in fact it went down 55%,
- Committing to dismantle the protections the nation has built against climate change.
If there are valid reasons that the candidate is not fit for office or is under foreign influence, then it is the duty of the Electoral College to select an alternate candidate. The challenge of the Electoral College is what standard to apply to the qualification of the candidate, and what process would be used to select an alternate.
A process for qualifying the candidate and, if necessary, selecting an alternate is discussed in the article: 2016 Electoral College Process of Confirmation for Electors
This process describes a set of Votes of Confirmation to qualify and elect the candidate. If the primary candidate is disqualified, then a process of nominating alternatives and holding Electoral College votes to cull this list down to two candidates, and finally one candidate. This candidate is then qualified using the same Votes of Confirmation. The process eventually selects a qualified candidate.
The process to qualify a candidate will require several rounds of votes and debates, and some level of parliamentary rules of order distributed across all 51 locations. In prior times, this would have been impossible.
Now however, social media and collaboration software can easily handle this task. For example, a Slack team (or “site”) can be created which allows focused discussions and polls for decision making.
Slack is a chat program that has been growing in popularity for a several of years. Slack is regularly used to connect people across the globe. Chats are organized by channels. You can broadcast to the channel using the @here or @channel user reference. When you reference a @user, they get a notification. They are also notified when a channel they have joined is updated.
Anyone can create a channel, but it is better to use a well named set of topics. Messages are posted to a channel. Channels can be public and private, and the administrator for the channel invites people in and can eject people; for example if they leave the team or separate from the company.
Slack messages are persistent for a while -- 10,000 messages — then the older ones disappear forever (except under court order). If your team buys a subscription to Slack, messages last forever. 10,000 messages fly past in a couple of weeks on our small team; on the other hand, messages do stay around long enough to carry on a collaboration across time zones and even days. You can edit or delete your messages.
Slack is secure enough to be trusted by corporations, but there are a lot of access points and wires that can get crossed, so really treat it like Facebook: never post anything you wouldn't want the whole world to know.
You navigate between channels by clicking in the navigation on the left, and it shows you the messages. On the app versions, press and hold on a message or channel to open a menu to edit, rename, etc.
Slack is a powerful tool for organizing and collaborating on distributed projects.
The Electoral College can use a Slack team to manage the qualification and electing the president. While the traditional system would be used for the final vote, a Slack team can handle the debate, vote, and collaboration among the Electoral College Electors prior to the vote.
For example, each Vote of Confirmation in the qualification process can be mapped to Slack channels such as:
confirm-article-two: Does the candidate meet the qualifications of Article Two of the Constitution?
confirm-fair-election: Was the election conducted fairly without foreign, criminal or technical interference?
confirm-conflict-free: Is the candidate free from obligations or responsibilities which present a conflict of interest to serving the people of the nation.
confirm-patriotic: Is the candidate free from influence or obligation to foreign powers?
confirm-rational: Is the candidate sane and rational, without episodes demonstrating lack of self control, loss of reason, or reliance on non-facts or fantasy to justify behavior and decisions?
confirm-unimpeachable: Is the candidate free of acts of Treason or High Crimes and Misdemeanors which would make the candidate impeachable?
confirm-survivable: Is the candidate dedicated to protecting the nation by protecting the planet from climate change?
confirm-elected: Shall the candidate be elected as President of the United States?
Using Slack, a distributed debate and rounds of voting can be held for each question of qualification. Each channel supports holding polls and votes, as well as many other tools of collaborations.
If the primary candidate is disqualified, additional private rooms and polls can be constructed to nominate, select and qualify an alternate candidate.
A Slack team that includes these channels has been created: electoral-college.slack.com The Electoral College Electors are invited to consider using this site to perform their duty as Electors, using such private channels as are needed.
Using Slack, the distributed Electoral College Electors can rationally discuss, debate and vote on the qualification of the president in with unprecedented ease. This will require a quorum of Electors to adopt a process of qualifying votes, agreeing on the votes to qualify, organizing debates and votes, and validating results. The Electors must be dedicated to take the time and initiative to qualify and if necessary select an alternate candidate.
Social Network tools like Slack empower the Electoral College Electors to collaborate, debate, fact check, and organize to perform their duty to defend the Constitution, preserve Democracy, and make sure the elected President is qualified and fit for duty.