Matt Mahan

The tools we build in Silicon Valley represent the best hope for fixing our democracy

[Commentary] Never before have people been able to self-organize and multiply for offline action almost instantly and with such little financial cost and planning effort. This awesome power — facilitated by free, ubiquitous and mobile tools for many-to-many communication — creates new possibilities for the grassroots to drive electoral and legislative outcomes, whether by rejecting establishment candidates or bringing people out into the streets to protest government action. We’re witnessing an important reminder that the tools we build in Silicon Valley can meaningfully shift sources and forms of political power. And as with all technologies, whether it is leveraged for good or bad is ultimately up to those who use it.

As an emerging sector, civic tech is beginning to improve the machinery of democracy even if our scale hasn’t yet transformed ballot box outcomes in the way that the Internet and iPhones have transformed the speed and scale of protests. Perhaps the best place for these new tools of democracy to focus is at the state and local level, where a new battleground is forming and where voter turnout is especially low.

[Mahan is CEO of Brigade, a startup he co-founded with Sean Parker in 2014 to reenergize public participation in democracy.]