Liquid Feedback

= LiquidFeedback is an open source project of Public Software Group e. V.

URL = http://liquidfeedback.org/

See also: Liquid Democracy

Description

"LiquidFeedback is an open-source software, powering internet platforms for proposition development and decision making.

LiquidFeedback is an independent open source project published under MIT license by the Public Software Group of Berlin, Germany. The developers of LiquidFeedback have joined together in the Interaktive Demokratie association to promote the use of electronic media for democratic processes.

Concepts

Liquid Democracy | The basic idea is a democratic system in which most issues are decided (or strongly suggested to representatives) by direct referendum. Considering nobody has enough time and knowledge for every issue, votes can be delegated by topic. Furthermore delegations are transitive and can be revoked at any time. Liquid Democracy is sometimes referred to as Delegated or Proxy Voting.

Proposition development process | Structured feedback is intended to organize communication between an initiative and the voters. Initiatives shall get an idea how successful a proposition is likely to be and what to change in order to gain more support. Likewise voters can try to influence propositions by their feedback or instigate a new initiative with an own proposition if they so wish.

Preferential voting | We neither want to force people to compromise in case they may not want this nor encourage them to vote based on majorities and chances rather than political objectives. In order to allow voters to express preferences we implemented a very advanced voting system based on Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping (CSSD) also known as the Schulze method.

Interactive Democracy | LiquidFeedback introduces a new communication channel between voters and representatives, delivers reliable results about what the participants want and can be used for information, suggestion, or directive depending on the organizational needs and the national legislation." (http://liquidfeedback.org/)

Characteristics

Transitive Delegations

"It’s not always possible for everyone to make a well-founded decision on every topic. To overcome this problem of direct democracy, LiquidFeedback provides the possibility to delegate your vote to someone else – and to revoke those delegations at any time. This leads to

   transparent division of work within the democratic process, while keeping everyones ability to directly participate in any issue at any time

   nondiscrimination of those people who do not have the time or ability to vote for each issue themselves

Delegations in LiquidFeedback are transitive. That means, if you don’t know who is the most skilled person to decide about a particular topic, you may delegate your vote to someone else you trust. If your trustee feels confident to participate in the subject him- or herself, your voting weight may be used directly. But if your trustee knows another person, who is better suitable to decide about the issue, then he or she can further delegate your vote to someone else, and so on. Knowing that these rules are in effect, people are not obligated to delegate their vote directly to a final decision maker (e.g. a prominent politician known for dealing with a given issue).

Do transitive delegations lead to a concentration of power?

Transitive delegations create chains of trust.

As delegations are revokable at any time, each person within such a chain of trust can break the chain and reclaim the power, taking away many votes from the final representative at once.

Yet it is sometimes argued that transitive delegations can still lead to a few delegates, who over-rule many other directly voting individuals. While at a first glance it might appear undemocratic, it is a desired effect: Only if delegating members are counted in the same way as directly voting members, their vote is taken into account equally. Treating directly voting members in a different way than delegating members (i.e. canceling the voting weight of delegating members under certain predefined conditions) would actually undermine the democratic principle of “one man, one vote”." (http://liquidfeedback.org/2012/07/07/transitive-delegations-in-liquidfeedback/)

More Information

Interaktive Demokratie e. V., Verein zur Förderung des Einsatzes elektronischer Medien für demokratische Prozesse

info@interaktive-demokratie.org