April 10th, 2025

Dear Neighbors,

Like many of you, I've felt that our democracy is going awry. It's not about any political figure — I think both the left and right feel it.

It's a sense that our world is breaking down, and there's little we can do to stop it.

Well, our world is shaped by our democracy. And democracy, in its current form, does not seem to be able to keep up with the rapid and destabilizing changes of the modern world.

I think about this from a system design perspective: How does our democracy function? How do we logistically turn millions of voices into democratic decisions? How do we ensure every voice is included? How do we guard against bias, groupthink, and inertia?

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Over the years this has led me to explore and advocate for promising new variations of democratic decision-making like Citizens' Assemblies.

The problem, however, is always implementation. We can theorize a perfect society; we can write a new constitution that fixes every problem of government. But how do we design solutions that can be used right away — not in a far off future that may never come?

Thinking about this for a long time has led to a project I'm very excited to share with you called DemocracyOS. It's an attempt to redesign democracy in a way we can start implementing now, relatively easily, with buy-in all around — from both the public and our democratically elected leaders.

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We started by asking ourselves this question:

How do we get as much input, from as many people as possible, while ensuring that all voices are represented — not just the loudest, wealthiest, or most well-connected?

And then, how do we make sense of all that input to ensure every voice counts, and can guide smart decisions as a society?

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The DemocracyOS answer is to combine the easiest and most accessible platform today — text messaging — with random sampling that ensures responses are reflective of the overall community, like a Burlington-in-miniature.

We then turn these responses into reports for city leaders, giving them both data and stories that make the overall public's concerns and ideas very clear.

It's a win for the public, because our voice is front and center, day after day, in the room with government.

But it's also a win for elected leaders, because they have more accurate information about the needs and ideas of their constituents, and have the tools to ensure that all views can be consistently counted and heard — therefore building trust over time.

I think this win-win approach is important because it reduces friction to adoption, and means change like this can spread much more quickly (if we can get it right — which is why we need your help to sign up and share feedback on the platform.)

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Sign up now, it's very easy:

Just go to democracyos.com and register. You'll start receiving our short surveys, which we call Pulse Ballots, a few times a month.

Try it out, and please share your feedback or ideas about the platform with me. I'd love to talk to anyone who wants to. Please keep in mind that this is an early version that will have bugs, issues, and kinks to iron out. So work with us on that.

If we can figure out even a modest improvement to how democracy works, it could have a big impact on our world. And the fact that I'm sharing this with you initially on Front Porch Forum, which started here in Burlington, proves it is possible!

Jesse Warren
Founder, DemocracyOS
Hayward St, Burlington
jesse@democracyos.com