Dēmos · Psephos · Paper II of V · In Preparation
Closing the Loop
Democracy’s feedback cycle and its quiet editors
by James Wolstencroft
Democracy is a feedback loop: govern, be judged, correct. It is the least bad system we have tried and the most corruptible, because the loop runs on records kept by the very officials it is meant to correct.
The paper follows the loop around its circuit and marks every point where the signal can be quietly edited before it reaches the voter.
Hands forward to Minding the Gap: the signal was edited long before the count.
In preparation, unpublished at the time of writing. This page holds the shape of the argument while the paper is written.