This question seems to arise on Quora in some form every few days: How can we make the world a better place? People ask me to answer. Of course, my answer is predictable.

An individual can communicate with another individual. A few people can communicate together. And we have broadcasting, where a single person, or a few people, can communicate to a lot of people.

What we need is a way for many people to all communicate with each other- thousands, millions, even billions. We try this with “representatives”, both in government, at the U.N., and at meetings like the recent climate talks. But it doesn’t work. I had no experience of being at the climate change talks, or being heard. Did you?

Do you remember Arab Spring in Egypt? They sent out the call for protests on social media and tens of thousands of people showed up. It was enough people that they felt strong, powerful, sharing their message of protest. Eventually, Mubarak stepped down.

But they had nothing to take his place. Their simple form of protest, plus their social media posts were insufficient to make a plan for their future. They did the usual thing, tried to find leaders and get them together. They, too, were insufficient and over the next weeks and months, the old order came back into power. What they lacked was a way for all the people to say what they wanted and choose a future together.

We have a similar situation in America. A minority rally behind the demagogue Donald Trump, unable to express themselves otherwise. Polls show that Bernie Sanders would beat Republicans much more easily than Hillary Clinton would, yet our primary system doesn’t express this well, with Clinton still way ahead of Sanders. Our system doesn’t even let us choose the most popular president. Is there some way we could all express what we want and design our future together?

PeopleCount.org proposes a solution. By voting on issues we could do exactly this- design our future together. By combining it with a way to hold Congress accountable, it’ll make a difference and be rewarding to use.

Imagine that PeopleCount were successful and adopted in other democracies. Imagine it were used by non-democracies, that dictators, and their populations, knew what the people wanted. Could changes be made peacefully? Imagine it were used in still-peaceful conflicts, like with Israel and the Palestinians- would it help for people to choose their future together?

How can we make the World a Better Place? Please add your email address to our mailing list and try out our prototype system of voting on issues. Expect us to launch by early Q2, 2016.