What is the symplest system of e-democracy that can be quickly implemented.
Joum
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The Australian registered political party called Online Direct Democracy is preparing for an Australian Federal election within a year. Our party is looking for House of Representative candidates and I am going to contest my electorate of Fisher.
I am LB Joum and my thoughts regarding Actuated Digital Direct Democracy are developing. I am keen to share them with people and get feedback and ideas of how it might work.
I want to implement a simple online group, perhaps on the Loomio platform. Group membership will be limited to verified members of my electorate – Fisher. I know that this system will have flaws but it is the quickest way that I can see to have a fast example of the idea in action.
I know this idea will have many issues. Firstly is the issue of account security and secondly is the verification of the members.
The main security issue is having a persons identity and or account stolen. The only thing I can think of is to have a process where a person can notify me that their account has been hijacked and deduct that vote until the account owner is verified. Which leads to the second issue.
This group will be very different to most accounts, where it doesn't really matter if a person is not who they say they are. In this group I must be certain - as best I can. But if you think about it, when we go to the polling booth to vote we do not have to produce ID, you get your name marked off a list. So if I can do at least as well as the Australian Electoral Commission then that should be enough. Eventually I would like to do better and send each person a 'snail mail' with a verification code, but that would require more functionality than most platforms currently have. Eventually our organisation will have to develop our own platform, and this is when it will become very exciting.
The reason. I only have one reason for creating the group - well sort of two. I want to give my electorate the opportunity to create my preference list that I recommend for the election. This is presented in a “how to vote” card that people take with them, or get handed, when they vote. Of course they don't have to follow it. I know, so why bother? In Australian Elections, preferences are a contentious issue. In the Senate election they are vital but most Australians don't understand our system so will be interested in House of Reps preferences too. But mostly, it is a way to involve people in a decision an show them how we will operate if we do get elected, and wouldn't that be great.
I can be quite sure that there will be Labour, Liberal National, and Green candidates so I will need to create a thread for each party and run a vote for each. To keep it simple, the number of each candidates “agree” votes will determine my preference list order.
I will lock the permissions of the parent group to only allow people to vote and comment. If they were able to create threads and decisions it would get messy. I will create a subgroup where people are open to do everything.
I like the idea of using Loomio because if is a very simple, usable platform. But the platform will have to change in the long run. It will need multiple choice and multiple levels. There are many design features to consider but all designs have one common and important element. They will all need to manage and verify their members. If we break the voters into small groups then it will be easier to manage the verification process. To begin with this needs to be a 'hands on' process. I like the idea of sending a snail mail with a code for them to log back in with. I would love to hear other ideas if you have them.
Or do you have any other ideas you would like to share? Remember to keep them as simple to implement as possible. I only have a small amount of ability so cannot create a complicated system but feel it is necessary to offer something that shows how decisions can be made online.
Barnaby Flynn Tue 4 Aug 2015 9:04AM
Do you want to help with this spreadsheet of e-democracy functions? We are using Loomio for Global People Power for now but there are several platforms developing fast.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_F1Qvno70FdblqPP3wU7D2lmhobjPQOies21Nrcn1x4/edit
Clark Davison Wed 19 Aug 2015 12:55AM
I noticed you liked a comment I made in the "Political use for loomio" topic. I haven't been active for a while as I had other commitments but hope to pick up again over the next few months. I have added some links to the "Other resources" section of the Google doc in your link - hope you find them interesting / useful.
Joum Tue 4 Aug 2015 9:50AM
Thanks @roslyn
@barnabyflynn Thanks. Nice presentation. This is a bit old now. One of our members did this some time ago. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b_DKFUTHxYfEtAsR3akWyNqxu3tZiyrSMmjklmXIgvw/edit?usp=sharing
Barnaby Flynn Tue 4 Aug 2015 6:36PM
At some point appgree will add commenting on questions and in a nested style plus voting up or down comments. They use an algorithm which enables millions of people to participate, so they say.
Barnaby Flynn Wed 19 Aug 2015 4:04PM
Vocaleyes have said they are interested in creating platform for Global People Power. They ask if there is any funding which could speed the process along a bit. Next week I will discuss with them the possibility of including a liquid democracy element and also some of the functions included within represent.cc .
Please see what I have done with the globalpeoplepower.weebly.com site (soon to be a .com site) and also the Action for a World parliament event in October. Would anyone like to get involved in any way?
Barnaby Flynn Wed 9 Sep 2015 5:38PM
I hope you don't mind me posting this. It's in keeping isn't it?Real Global Democracy Demonstration. 24th October. Parliament Sq. London. 1-6pm.
Let's celebrate our common humanity in the face of a perfect storm of global problems.
In solidarity with 22 actions around the world. www.worldparliamentnow.org/events/
The 1st of ongoing monthly demonstrations to unite and empower progressive, anti-austerity, pro-democracy, indigenous land-rights, cooperatives, Occupy, People's Assemblies, social, environmental and peace blockade movements around the world.
Suggest, debate and vote on 5 global policies to tackle global problems. You can start the process here: http://globalpeoplepower.weebly.com/many-minds.html
Crowd source solutions to climate change, mass extinction, war, debt, the power that multi-national corporations hold over national governments and laws such as TTIP, TISA and TPP.
Proposing global policies: ,War as the Very Last Solution to Resolving Conflict, a 50-50 Gender Equity Global Democracy Declaration, a Universal Declaration of Planetary Rights, a Global Magna Carta for the Internet, International Monetary Reform, a Circular Economy and Climate Fair Shares (to be confirmed).
Discussing what systemic thinking and action really means in a globalised world and looking at some of the many new e-democracy platforms that have emerged in recent months.
Why?
In today’s world, democratic action that fails to consider and include the whole world is still, at best, ethically partial.
Kim Cosmos Mon 16 Oct 2017 6:37AM
www.ethereum.org/dao#liquid-democracy will manage all the proxy verification but you will need 3rd party membership verification
William Asiata Tue 23 Jan 2018 12:22AM
Kia ora everyone, I am just going to leave this here.
I am doing some market research to learn more about what people need and to get feedback for a liquid-like democratically owned social network idea.
If you have a spare moment please fill out this survey questionnaire, I would love to hear your thoughts & comments and any feedback is much appreciated.
Survey: https://manytribes.typeform.com/to/hHgf6J
Many Thanks,
— William
Purple Library Guy Tue 23 Jan 2018 6:38PM
So I followed the link, went through the survey, but gave up near the end. Partly because I have no idea how to price something like this, so when it got to money questions I was left with a "huh?". Partly because there was very little information to go on about just what this thing is. It's very touchy-feely but I'm not convinced there's as much substance here as there is marketing. I don't know if it can be used for direct democracy at all or is purely an election-running platform, I don't know if the code is open source, I don't know if it's more or less real or just vaporware, I don't know how it's supposed to be sticking these different "tribes" together so I can't tell whether I think that will work.
It might be good. Or it might be marketer crap designed to sell some product in a can controlled by a vendor that will just run basic online elections, if and when it actually gets written. I have no obvious way of telling, either on the survey site or when I hunt up the ManyTribes home page.
Roslyn · Tue 4 Aug 2015 7:59AM
@lbjoum
I have had similar thoughts on security and privacy. It should be possible to get a list of registered electors in my area and tick people off the list when they create an account. And at this stage such participation would be voluntary, so issues of privacy and secrecy of the ballot may not be an issue (legally). Still, I'm intending to create an anonymized database of accounts that could be overseen by a third party. This should preserve privacy in general while allowing me to track down any problems related to fraud/abuse if they do occur.
I'm leaning toward DemocracyOS right now, because of its 'vote first, comment later' lay-out, but your idea for a vote-and-comment only Loomio group is good, too. I like Loomio - it is easy to use. Getting that up and running will already be enough of a challenge, but people are familiar with the basic idea from referenda, so it's a good way to start.
We do not do the preference cards here, but it is a good idea to get people using the system and make it less of an abstract talking point. Otherwise it can sound very pie-in-the-sky to a lot of people.