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Parliament vs. Direct Democracy

Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 by Marc

What NEED does this meet?

This idea is inspired by the Virtual Parliament suggestion from Craig Nicol, but rather than creating an online parliament with virtual representatives, this project will empower and encourage everybody to vote directly on issues in parliament.

What is the APPROACH?

The current debates in parliament will be presented in a way that allows visitors to weigh up the arguments. There will be online debate, and recordings of the real parliamentary sessions. Visitors will be able to use RSS feeds to stay informed about developments.

All users will be able to vote on every issue, and the results will be presented alongside the real votes of parliament. We will be able to see how closely our online referenda agree with the votes of our elected representatives.

What are the BENEFITS to people?

The idea is to engage people in an interactive process, rather than leaving them as powerless spectators. If people feel strongly about an issue they will encourage their friends to vote online, leading to a greater interest in current affairs.

What is the COMPETITION?

I’ve not seen anything similar.

What BUDGETS & LOGISTICS are required?

The major problem with implementing a voting system will be ensuring that people are not making duplicate votes. I don’t know of any solution to this problem … unless you can wait for the national identity register :)

2 Responses to “Parliament vs. Direct Democracy”

  1. Francis Irving Says:

    The policies feature in Public Whip is a branch of this idea see http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/policies.php We had all out voting in Dream MP, but it was a bit wild. The hard bit is giving simple explanations of what the votes means – the new policies are kind of a way of doing that.

  2. markhadman Says:

    http://s3.invisionfree.com/Virtual_Parliament/ – I made this a few years back but never had the time to promote it, anyone want to run with it?


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