2. The number of participants to be legitimate

The results of political polls leading up to elections, the percentage of those who actually voted for each candidate, and the overall percentage of those who vote have become scoreboards in the national political game.

In case you're wondering how many people vote, according to the US Census Bureau, the estimated voting age population in 2020 was 252.3 million including those ineligible to vote. The number eligible to vote was estimated to be 231.6 million citizens. The number who actually voted is estimated at 154.6 million, which was 66.8% of eligible voters, or 2 out of 3. [1]

About 52% of these voted for Biden and about 48% for Trump. In other words, about a third of all adult citizens voted for Biden, about a third voted for Trump, and the remaining third didn't vote.

Supposedly, if enough people do not vote then our democracy is in peril. Countries with lower voter turnout are judged as "less democratic" by political scientists. It would be only natural to overlay this perspective of representation onto our new democratic solution process and to question whether enough citizens would participate in each issue for the people to be represented.

Citizens represent themselves in a Collaborative Democracy

A true democracy like our Collaborative Democracy operates on a different principle than the republic that we have now. The people represent themselves rather than electing a party's candidates to represent them. In our current republic, political parties (as directed by the power elite) make all of the real governing decisions. Our only voice and power as citizens is to vote one party into office every four years. As it is our only voice, all of the voting and election statistics are important to us.

Conversely, in our Collaborative Democracy, issues would be solved one at a time through the collective intelligence of the citizens who participated. Each citizen would choose to participate or not in solving an issue. If citizens didn't care about the solution or if it didn't affect them, then not participating would be a legitimate choice. Their nonparticipation would not invalidate the results of those who participated or the democratic solution process. For each issue, those who participated would represent the rest, probably far better than they are represented now. Essentially, those choosing not to participate would trust the solution of that issue to the large group who did participate.

The minimum level of participation needed

However, a minimum number of people must participate for a solution to be legitimate. Would 10 people be enough? How about 100? How about 535 like our Congress? Or even 1,000? Probably not.

Currently, the President makes unilateral decisions in the Federal Register as a monarch would, representing us by a vote of 1. The majority political party in Congress creates laws as its politicians vote as they are told and we don't even know who is actually making the decisions behind the party in control. A minimum of 51 senators and 218 members of the House must vote for a solution and the President must sign a bill for it to become law. Therefore, we allow 269 people to represent us in making national laws through Congress now and just 1 if it is the President. Regardless, how many actual participants would we need in our democratic solution process to believe that the solution to an issue was legitimate?

Statistics can determine the minimum legitimate number

We can turn to statistics to determine a minimum number of participants. The minimum would equal the minimum sample size required to represent the US adult citizen population affected by the issue. Granted, the participants would not be randomly selected from the population as with a survey. When doing a survey, random selection is considered necessary to ensure that those sampled adequately represent the population within a stated level of confidence and margin of error.  

Conversely, citizens who participated in our process would be those with an interest in the outcome of the solution who chose to participate. In our case, solving the issue with those most interested in the issue would be an advantage, not a disadvantage, justifying self-selection over random selection. You could say that the participants represent 100% of the population of citizens who care about a solution to the issue.

That aside, if we want to set a minimum number of participants for a solution to pass, we could use the sample size calculation. For issues that affected the entire population, we could calculate the minimum sample size to represent the 232 million citizens ages 18 and older. A common level of confidence for scientific studies is 95%, but is sometimes lower in political polls. Assuming the most stringent 99% confidence level and a 1% margin of error, a minimum of 16,600 participants would be needed. [2] For a strong consensus of 60% or more of the 16,600 participants, a minimum of 10,000 would need to vote to approve the new solution at the end of the democratic solution process.

In other words, if you posted a national issue that affected everyone, you would need to persuade at least 16,600 people to complete the entire solution process. If less than 16,600 people were participating in the issue after a given time, the issue would be cancelled for lack of participation. In addition, at least 16,600 people would need to vote at the end to confirm the consensus solution with an approval vote of at least 10,000 for the consensus solution to pass.

Keep in mind that these 16,600 people would not be simply voting their opinion. They would go through the solution process together and the solutions would be based on their collective intelligence. While it may seem remarkable that a minimum of 16,600 people would be sufficient to represent our nation, statistically we could be 99% confident that they do with a 1% margin of error. To state that in practical terms, 99% of the time, the participation of additional citizens would not change the percentage of Agree and Disagree assessments of each statement or the approval vote, even if all 232 million adult citizens participated.

Annual participation time per citizen

To determine the amount of time needed per adult citizen, we need to estimate the number of issues per year. Depending on the issue complexity and the level of participation, the resolution of an issue could take several months. However, several issues could be handled simultaneously by a Federal Council and its moderating staff. I anticipate that each Federal Council could handle 30 to 50 issues per year.

The exact number of current federal departments and agencies is not known. There could be as many as 450. [3] I roughly estimate that the number of committees remaining in the Legislature would be less than 100. Therefore, considering that there may be a Federal Council at each level of a department, I estimate that there would be around 2,500 Federal Councils with Citizen Governance Websites. Solving 40 issues per year on average for about 2,500 Federal Councils would equate to approximately 100,000 issues solved per year.

However, currently the actual number of laws, executive orders, and rules generated each year are far fewer than this. From 2000 through 2016, the average number of laws created each year was 201. The average number of executive orders was 37. And the average number of rules was 3,826. The average number of significant rules was 804. [4] Assuming the worst case that citizens would make all rules, not just the significant rules, the sum of the average number of laws, executive orders, and final rules was 4,064.

However, some laws covered multiple subjects or issues. Therefore, in our Collaborative Democracy the number of issues solved would likely be more than 4,000. Regardless, many of the extra laws in omnibus bills, especially in the giant annual appropriations bills, are "riders" that would not be approved by Congress or the President if considered separately. Most of these riders would not pass muster to be solved by citizens as issues. After removing the riders from the bills, I estimate that there would be no more than 10,000 issues per year equivalent to the laws, executive orders, and rules per year now. Just to be safe, let's assume that citizens submit 25,000 issues per year. That would be about 10 issues per year per Federal Council.

Each issue would require about 2 hours of total time per participant on average. If 16,600 citizens were needed to participate in each issue, then a citizen would participate in about 2 issues per year on average, spending a total of about 4 hours per year as shown below.

214 million voters ÷ 16,600 participants/issue = 12,891 issues

25,000 issues per year ÷ 12,891 issues = 2 issues per person

2 issues per person per year x 2 hours each = 4 hours per year

Of course, some citizens will not spend any time while active participants might spend several hours per week or around 100 hours per year depending on the issues. In addition, some issues could have millions of participants. The average number of participants per issue could be much higher than 16,600 and people might spend more than 3 to 4 hours per year on average as well. As we have seen in participatory budgeting and other democratic processes, the more people are allowed a voice and an opportunity to actually help determine outcomes, the more they are willing to participate. There are many assumptions in these calculations (and some guesswork), but they confirm that our citizenry could handle a sufficient number of issues per year while maintaining a sufficient minimum of participants per issue.