Casting a vote

A vote is not a prediction of what someone would want. It is the act by which a citizen, one among equals, hands over a share of authority and accepts what follows from it. Models forecast elections well, and a preference model can guess an individual ballot from very little data. None of that is voting. The franchise is attached to a person because the whole point of the act is that the community decided, and a community is made of members who can be counted, argued with and held to what they chose. Article 21 of the Universal Declaration ties the will of the people to periodic elections and universal suffrage, which says who may do this rather than how well it can be done. A system voting on your behalf would produce a result. It would not produce a mandate.