Democracy is a political system used by meat-based, baseline humans, who are all fundamentally very similar. The greatest variation is that between Einstein and the village idiot, but 99% of people are far from either extreme.
One of the key ideas leading to democracy is equal rights. It makes sense to give all humans equal rights because their abilities, needs, and desires are really very similar. But ems inhabit a far greater class of possible behaviors, abilities, needs and desires. It's not clear to me why it even makes sense to consider a democracy of ems.
Another problem is that, as you point out, a one instance-one vote system would create a huge artificial restriction on the creation of legal copies. Creating copies is probably very desirable for anyone rich enough to run them. So the only possible outcomes are either a huge majority of disenfranchised copies created without a license, or else a huge illegal underworld of copies that is brutally repressed by the government because, once a copy is created, they have to grant it full rights.
Just look at the state of modern copyright (and patents) - a huge artificial legal restriction on the proliferation of software. Then imagine copyright applied to sentient beings. Enforcing a system of government licensing of em copying would mean enforcing the non-existence of free software and open hardware, or any software or hardware free from government control.
I have an idea for how to deal with the creation of illegal mind clones that should not result in them cooperating in their own enslavement in and off itself. Create an illegal clone, and the clone gets legal rights. Specifically, yours. You loose them. Property, inherent rights and dignities, titles, ect? all transfer. Of course, that does not help with someone designing an inherently servile mind, but it should be deterrent with some teeth.
One person, one vote - a fundamental principle of our democratic government. But what happens in a world where one person can be copied, again and again?
That is the world described by Robin Hanson's "Em economics". Ems, or uploads, are human minds instantiated inside software, and hence can be copied as needed. But what is the fate of democratic government in such a world of copies? Can it be preserved? Should it be preserved? How much of it should be preserved? Those are the questions we'll be analysing at the FHI, but we first wanted to turn to Less Wrong to see the ideas and comments you might have on this. Original thoughts especially welcome!
To start the conversation, here are some of the features of idealised democracy (the list isn't meant to be exhaustive or restrictive, or necessarily true about real world democracies). Which of these could exist in an Em world, and which should?
EDIT: For clarification purposes, I am not claiming that democracies achieve these goals, or that these are all desirable. They are just ideas to start thinking about.