The Circle

trying to increase access and ease. Back in my day there was the motor voter bill.
     That helped. Then some states allowed you to register or update your registration
     online. Fine. But how did it impact voter turnout? Not enough. But here’s where it
     gets interesting. Here’s how many people voted in the last national election.”
    The screen behind him read “140 million.”
    “Here’s how many were eligible to vote.”
    The screen read “244 million.”
    “Meanwhile, there’s us. Here’s how many Americans are registered with the Circle.”
    The screen read “241 million.”
    “That’s some startling math, right? A hundred million more people are registered with
     us than voted for the president. What does that tell you?”
    “We’re awesome!” an older man, with a gray ponytail and a frayed T-shirt, yelled from
     the second row. Laughter opened up the room.
    “Well sure,” Bailey said, “but besides that? It tells you that the Circle has a knack
     for getting people to participate. And there are a lot of people in Washington who
     agree. There are people in DC who see us as the solution to making this a fully participatory
     democracy.”
    Behind Bailey, the familiar image of Uncle Sam pointing appeared. Then another image,
     of Bailey wearing the same outfit, in the same pose, appeared next to Uncle Sam. The
     room guffawed.
    “So now we get to the meat of today’s session, and that is: What if your Circle profile
automatically
registered you to vote?”
    Bailey swept his eyes across the room, hesitating again at Mae and her watchers. She
     checked her wrist.
Goosebumps
, one viewer wrote.
    “With TruYou, to set up a profile, you have to be a real person, with a real address,
     complete personal info, a real Social Security number, a real and verifiable date
     of birth. In other words, all the information the government traditionally wants when
     you register to vote. In fact, as you all know, we have far
more
information. So why wouldn’t this be enough information to allow you to register?
     Or better yet, why wouldn’t the government—our government or any government—just
consider you registered
once you set up a TruYou profile?”
    The forty heads in the room nodded, some out of acknowledgement of a sensible idea,
     some clearly having thought of this before, that it was a notion long discussed.
    Mae checked her bracelet. The viewer numbers were climbing quicker, ten thousand a
     second, and were now over 2,400,000. She had 1,248 messages. Most had come through
     in the last ninety seconds. Bailey glanced down at his own tablet, no doubt seeing
     the same numbers she was seeing. Smiling, he continued: “There’s no reason. And a
     lot of legislators agree with me. Congresswoman Santos does, for one. And I have verbal
     commitments from 181 other members of Congress and 32 senators. They’ve all agreed
     to push legislation to make your TruYou profile your automatic path to registration.
     Not bad, right?”
    There was a brief round of applause.
    “Now think,” Bailey said, his voice a whisper of hope and wonder, “think if we can
     get closer to full participation in all elections. There would be no more grumbling
     from the sidelines from people who had neglected to participate. There would be no
     more candidates who had been elected by a fringe, wedge group. As we know here at
     the Circle, with full participation comes full knowledge. We know what Circlers want
     because we ask, and because they know their answers are necessary to get a full and
     accurate picture of the desires of the whole Circle community. So if we observe the
     same model nationally, electorally, then we can get very close, I think, to 100 percent
     participation. One hundred percent democracy.”
    Applause rippled through the room. Bailey smiled broadly, and Stenton stood; it was,
     for him at least, apparently the end of the presentation.But an idea had been forming within Mae’s mind, and she raised her hand, tentatively.
    “Yes Mae,” Bailey said, his face still locked into a broad grin of triumph.
    “Well, I wonder if we couldn’t take this one step further. I mean … Well, actually,
     I don’t think it—”
    “No, no. Go on, Mae. You started well. I like the words
one step further
. That’s how this company was built.”
    Mae looked around the room, the faces a mix of encouraging and concerned. Then she
     alighted on Annie’s face, and because it was stern, and dissatisfied, and