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In 2015 Ada Colau, an activist with no experience in government, became mayor of Barcelona. She called for a democratic revolution, and for the last two years city hall, working with civic-minded coders and cryptographers, has been designing the technological tools to make it happen.
Their efforts have centred on two things. The first is opening up governance through participatory processes and greater transparency. And the second is redefining the smart city to ensure that it serves its citizens, rather than the other way around.
The group started by creating a digital participatory platform, Decidim ("We Decide", in Catalan). Now the public can participate directly in government as they would on social media, by suggesting ideas, debating them, and voting with their thumbs. Decidim taps into the potential of social networks: the information spreading on Twitter, or the relationships on Facebook. All of these apply to politics — and Decidim seeks to channel them, while guaranteeing personal privacy and public transparency in a way these platforms don't.
"We are experimenting with a hybrid of online and offline participatory democracy," says Francesca Bria, Barcelona's Chief Technology and Digital Innovation Officer. "We used Decidim to create the government agenda — over 70 per cent of the proposals come directly from citizens. Over 40,000 citizens proposed these policies. And many more citizens were engaged in offline collective assemblies and consultations."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday May 22 2018, @08:50PM (1 child)
You overlooked a few major differences which I think would completely change the dynamics of the situation:
- Congress critters are pre-selected by the primary process (and lots of money and power-brokering behind the scenes), while transferable votes would allow *anyone* to amass such power, without any bureaucratic process or third-party approval involved.
- You wouldn't have elections as such - instead you'd have continuous "approval voting", since every one of the people who "voted for" you could revoke their vote at any moment, and give it to someone else that they felt would represent them better. No more "free ride until a few months before the next election", every day would be a competition to represent your base better than any of the many others trying to court them away.
- It would be difficult for representatives to "betray" anyone paying any attention - you would always have the option to cast your vote personally, rather than letting them do so on your behalf.
Party politics would likely be changed dramatically as well - probably weakened I would think, and that's probably a good thing. After all, incumbent Representative R isn't just competing for (possibly gerrymandered) votes against Opponent D every few years - they're also competing against every other R for votes on a daily basis, including all the ones that didn't have enough "popular appeal" (or the right backing) to make it through the primaries.
Not to mention all the smaller parties which would suddenly become viable - when whoever you "vote" for is *guaranteed* to gain the power of your vote, suddenly voting your conscience becomes much more rational - you can't possibly split the vote, because there is no magical election day "finish line" that determines winners and losers - anyone who gets *any* votes gets to wield that slice of power for as long as they can convince their base to follow them.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday May 23 2018, @03:49AM
I had not considered the continual nature of this voting process, nor the 3rd party benefit.
I agree, it does change the dynamics. I'd participate in it, at least for testing purposes. Like maybe a test case for Portland.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.