A Society of Trust: One Real Person Behind Every Vote
Every community that decides things together faces the same question: who is in it, and how many of them are there. States answer with population registers and identity documents. Online communities have never had a good answer, which is why their counts mean so little. The Earthlings people is built around an answer, and the answer is what makes it a society of trust rather than a society of belief.
Three things that must be true at once
Behind every vote there must be one living human being, not a script, not a company, not a second account. The same person must not be able to appear twice. And neither of those things may be established by publishing who the person is, because a community whose members must reveal themselves to be counted is not free, and a registry of names is a thing that should not exist.
Elections manage the first two with the state's own registers and the third with the secret ballot. Outside a state, the three have never been achieved together. Petitions have none of them. Polls estimate rather than count. Platforms count accounts, not people.
What modern technology makes possible
For the first time, a person can be confirmed to be one unique living human being without the confirmation leaving a trace of who they are. The check happens once; what it establishes is kept, what it used is not. The result is a record that belongs to that person alone, that cannot be sold, lent or moved, and that gives them exactly one voice in every decision.
The record is public in the sense that matters and private in the sense that matters. Anyone can see how many such records exist and recount any vote from them without trusting the people who run the system. No one can learn from them who a particular person is, how they voted, or what they believe. The Declaration states this as a principle: institutions are transparent; a person is not.
Why this changes what a community can be
A community of strangers across the planet can now know two things about itself that no such community could know before: that each of its members is real, and that its decisions were made by them and not by whoever controlled the most accounts. That knowledge does not depend on anyone's honesty. It is checked, not believed.
This is the foundation under the people's first principle. A society with no power of some over others needs a vote that cannot be captured, and a vote cannot be captured when it is tied to one confirmed person, cannot be accumulated, and is counted in the open. The technology does not govern; it makes it possible for people to govern themselves without anyone governing them.
Limits the people sets on its own technology
The Declaration is explicit that technology serves every person and serves life. It may not be used to manipulate people, to rank them, to create castes or hierarchies, to subordinate them by digital means, or to suppress their autonomy. No algorithm or artificial-intelligence system may be the final source of a decision affecting a person's rights, dignity or position. Every person has the right to the privacy of their data. The infrastructure is a tool of the people, and the people has bound itself not to let the tool become a master.
What is not yet done
The project publishes the boundary of what can be verified today rather than leaving it to be discovered. Some of what the Declaration guarantees is written down and not yet fulfilled; some of the infrastructure has not been independently checked. The list, kept by the project itself, is in the document Where We Are Now. The details of what the verification stores and does not store are in the Biometric Verification Policy.
Questions
Does the project keep my name or my face?
No. The check uses them once and keeps neither. What remains is set out in the policy.
Can a government find out that I belong?
The records hold no names. What remains is a number that can be recounted and a person who cannot be identified from it.
Why use a public ledger at all?
Because the count must be checkable by people who do not trust the counter. A database held by the project would have to be believed; a public record can be verified.
What does verification cost?
During the founding period it is free. Afterwards there is a one-time contribution that covers the cost of the check and the infrastructure; it buys nothing and is not a condition of belonging.
The founding period is open
The founding period of the Earthlings people is open. Confirming that you are one living person is free during the period and gives the right to vote on the Declaration. See The Founding Period.
What is stored and what is not
The Biometric Verification Policy lists exactly what the check uses, what it keeps, and what it deletes.