The Circle

seemed to
     be expecting, or wanting, Mae to fail, to embarrass herself, Mae gathered herself,
     took a breath, and forged ahead.
    “Okay, well, you were saying we could get close to 100 percent participation. And
     I wonder why we couldn’t just work backwards from that goal, using all the steps you
     outlined. All the tools we already have.”
    Mae looked around the room, ready to quit at the first pair of skeptical eyes, but
     she saw only curiosity, the slow collective nodding of a group practiced in pre-emptive
     validation.
    “Go on,” Bailey said.
    “I’m just going to connect some dots,” Mae said. “Well, first of all, we all agree
     that we’d like 100 percent participation, and that everyone would agree that 100 percent
     participation is the ideal.”
    “Yes,” Bailey said. “It’s certainly the idealist’s ideal.”
    “And we currently have 83 percent of the voting-age Americans registered on the Circle?”
    “Yes.”
    “And it seems that we’re on our way to voters being able to register, and maybe even
     to actually vote, through the Circle.”
    Bailey’s head was bobbing side to side, some indication of mild doubt, but he was
     smiling, his eyes encouraging. “A small leap, but okay. Go on.”
    “So why not
require
every voting-age citizen to have a Circle account?”
    There was some shuffling in the room, some intake of breath, mostly from the older
     Circlers.
    “Let her finish,” someone, a new voice, said. Mae looked around to find Stenton near
     the door. His armed were crossed, his eyes staring at the floor. He looked, briefly,
     up to Mae, and nodded brusquely. She regained her direction.
    “Okay, I know the initial reaction will be resistance. I mean, how can we
require
anyone to use our services? But we have to remember that there are all kinds of things
     that are mandatory for citizens of this country—and these things are mandatory in
     most industrialized countries. Do you have to send your kids to school? Yes. That’s
     mandatory. It’s a law. Kids have to go to school, or you have to arrange some kind
     of home schooling. But it’s mandatory. It’s also mandatory that you register for the
     draft, right? That you get rid of your garbage in an acceptable way; you can’t drop
     it on the street. You have to have a license if you want to drive, and when you do,
     you have to wear a seat belt.”
    Stenton joined in again. “We require people to pay taxes. And to pay into Social Security.
     To serve on juries.”
    “Right,” Mae said, “and to pee indoors, not on the streets. I mean,we have ten thousand laws. We require so many legitimate things of citizens of the
     United States. So why can’t we require them to vote? They do in dozens of countries.”
    “It’s been proposed here,” one of the older Circlers said.
    “Not by us,” Stenton countered.
    “And that’s my point,” Mae said, nodding to Stenton. “The technology has never been
     there before. I mean, at any other moment in history, it would have been prohibitively
     expensive to track down everyone and register them to vote, and then to make sure
     they actually did. You’d have to go door to door. Drive people to polls. All these
     unfeasible things. Even in the countries where it’s mandatory, it’s not really enforced.
     But now it’s within reach. I mean, you cross-reference any voting rolls with the names
     in our TruYou database, and you’d find half the missing voters right there and then.
     You register them automatically, and then when election day comes around, you make
     sure they vote.”
    “How do we do that?” a female voice said. Mae realized it was Annie’s. It wasn’t a
     direct challenge, but the tone wasn’t friendly, either.
    “Oh jeez,” Bailey said, “a hundred ways. That’s an easy part. You remind them ten
     times that day. Maybe their accounts don’t work that day till they vote. That’s what
     I’d favor anyway. ‘Hello Annie!’ it could say. ‘Take five minutes to vote.’ Whatever
     it is. We do that for our own surveys. You know that, Annie.” And when he said her
     name, he shaded it with disappointment and warning, discouraging her from opening
     her mouth again. He brightened and turned back to Mae. “And the stragglers?” he asked.
    Mae smiled at him. She had an answer. She looked at her bracelet.There were now 7,202,821 people watching. When had that happened?
    “Well, everyone has to pay taxes, right? How many people do it online