The Circle

now? Last year,
     maybe 80 percent. What if we all stopped duplicating services and made it all part
     of one unified system? You use your Circle account to pay taxes, to register to vote,
     to pay your parking tickets, to do anything. I mean, we would save each user hundreds
     of hours of inconvenience, and collectively, the country would save billions.”
    “
Hundreds
of billions,” Stenton amended.
    “Right,” Mae said. “Our interfaces are infinitely easier to use than, say, the patchwork
     of DMV sites around the country. What if you could renew your license through us?
     What if every government service could be facilitated through our network? People
     would leap at the chance. Instead of visiting a hundred different sites for a hundred
     different government services, it could all be done through the Circle.”
    Annie opened her mouth again. Mae knew it was a mistake. “But why wouldn’t the government,”
     Annie asked, “just build a similar wraparound service? Why do they need us?”
    Mae couldn’t decide if she was asking this rhetorically or if she truly felt this
     was a valid point. In any case, much of the room was now snickering. The government
     building a system, from scratch, to rival the Circle? Mae looked to Bailey and to
     Stenton. Stenton smiled, raised his chin, and decided to take this one himself.
    “Well, Annie, a government project to build a similar platform from the ground up
     would be ludicrous, and costly, and, well, impossible. We already have the infrastructure,
     and 83 percent of the electorate. Does that make sense to you?”
    Annie nodded, her eyes showing fear and regret and maybe even some quickly fading
     defiance. Stenton’s tone was dismissive, and Mae hoped he would soften when he continued.
    “Now more than ever,” he said, but now more condescending than before, “Washington
     is trying to save money, and is disinclined to build vast new bureaucracies from scratch.
     Right now it costs the government about ten dollars to facilitate every vote. Two
     hundred million people vote, and it costs the feds two billion to run the presidential
     election every four years. Just to process the votes for that one election, that one
     day. You factor in every state and local election, we’re talking hundreds of billions
     every year in unnecessary costs associated with simple vote processing. I mean, they’re
     still doing it on paper in some states. If we provide these services for free, we’re
     saving the government billions of dollars, and, more importantly, the results would
     be known simultaneously. Do you see the truth in that?”
    Annie nodded grimly, and Stenton looked to her, as if assessing her anew. He turned
     to Mae, urging her to continue.
    “And if it’s mandatory to have a TruYou account to pay taxes or receive any government
     service,” she said, “then we’re very close to having 100 percent of the citizenry.
     And then we can take the temperature of everyone at any time. A small town wants everyone
     to vote on a local ordinance. TruYou knows everyone’s address, so only residents of
     that town can vote. And when they do, the results are known in minutes. A state wants
     to see how everyone feels about a new tax. Same thing—instant and clear and verifiable
     data.”
    “It would eliminate the guesswork,” Stenton said, now standing at the head of the
     table. “Eliminate lobbyists. Eliminate polls. It might even eliminate Congress. If
     we can know the will of the people atany time, without filter, without misinterpretation or bastardization, wouldn’t it
     eliminate much of Washington?”
    The night was cold and the winds were lacerating but Mae didn’t notice. Everything
     felt good, clean and right. To have the validation of the Wise Men, to have perhaps
     pivoted the entire company in a new direction, to have, perhaps,
perhaps
, ensured a new level of participatory democracy—could it be that the Circle, with
     her new idea, might really
perfect
democracy? Could she have conceived of the solution to a thousand-year-old problem?
    There had been some concern, just after the meeting, about a private company taking
     over a very public act like voting. But the logic of it, the savings inherent, was
     winning the day. What if the schools had two hundred billion? What if the health care
     system had two hundred billion? Any number of the country’s ills would be addressed
     or solved with that kind of savings—savings not just