Continuous Democracy

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Italian project of the Telematics Freedom Foundation

URL = http://www.telematicsfreedom.org/en/projects/continuous-democracy


Description

"many people are currently discussing putting the ideal concept of a True and Continuous Democracy into practice, where citizens directly discuss topics while directly expressing their votes, as in the Athenian Polis, but on a much larger scale. This may have seemed impractical until now to most people, but could today become a feasible alternative, thanks to the growing diffusion of modern communication tools such as the Internet and mobile phone and data infrastructures.

Telematics Freedom Foundation, thanks to the experience of its staff and their collaborators, has designed and developed a series of software tools, methodologies and telematics infrastructures focused on security, reliability and stability to support people willing to start experiencing the potential of a Continuous Democracy, in the expectation of spreading the adoption of these methods on a larger scale in the near future in order to ultimately achieve a democracy based on everybody's participation, in the overall public interest." (http://www.telematicsfreedom.org/en/projects/continuous-democracy)


Details

"We are elaborating different strategies which can be combined to reach this goal. Ranging from democratic models to run an organization and research on e-Voting, to a mix of software tools that promote democratic organizing:


  • Decide2Gether: an add-on module providing Functionality and User Interface for online voting. Can be plugged into our other applications or into your custom web application;
  • Draft2Gether: a collaborative text feedback tool, allowing groups of 8-100 people to participate in commenting on and amending documents to rapidly reach consensus. Can be used under Rule2Gether, under Do2Gether or as a stand-alone application. Can make use of Decide2Gether to add the ability for users to vote and automatically approve/reject text amendments;
  • Rule2Gether: a general-purpose consensus-building and decision-making tool, to organize agenda items and proposals within any organization willing to empower its members by collecting their feedback. Can be used under Do2Gether or as a standalone application (we have a demo at www.rule2gether.com). Can make use of Decide2Gether to create elections such as "Elect top 10 Political Program Priorities", "Elect new Advisory Board members", etc...;
  • Do2Gether: a political social networking and groups management tool. Can be the main container to run Rule2Gether, Draft2Gether and Decide2Gether applications, providing powerful integration and the most common groupware functionality."

(http://www.telematicsfreedom.org/en/project/6/telematic-tools-continuous-democracy)


Example

"The "Lista Partecipata" (participated list) for Direct Democracy, based in Rome, was the first civic list to make use of and finance development of the consensus-building Rule2Gether software, created by TFF.

The "Lista Partecipata" proposes the candidature and election of representatives formally committed, in the exercise of their duties and at the time of casting their vote, to exactly mirror the will expressed by citizens through systems of direct democracy, or else to have immediately revoked their mandate.

To ensure that this will actually happen, elected candidates are requested to complete and sign a letter of resignation in advance, with a blank date, which may be used in the event that the elected representative betrays his commitments.

This act, along with other software techniques, ensure that all elected representatives coming from the List will actually represent citizens and won't instead behave differently, aligning themselves to alliances established by political parties or following directives extraneous to their electoral base, under pressure from influential forces or for personal gain." (http://www.telematicsfreedom.org/en/project/6/lista-partecipata)