How The Internet Enables Direct Democracy

This short video presentation by Craig's List founder, Craig Newark, explains how the internet enables direct democracy.

The Net Delusion

The Net Delusion, a book by Evgeny Morozov, provides a repost to the notion that today's Internet benefits democracy. Despite the role of Google, Facebook and Twitter in democracy campaigns in Iran and China he points to those governments exploiting the same technology for their own ends.
According to john Kampfner, writing in The Sunday Times, "... this is a valuable contribution to a debate in which Morozov has become a leading figure. In the new world after Wikileaks, two bulls are locking horns - the neo-anarchic view that all governments are bad and all information is good, versus the increasingly intolerant approach by governments (including now America) to Internet freedom. The bit in the middle, mediated journalism, NGOs and other institutions, is being dangerously squeezed."

Prejudicial Web

There has been simmering concern in our law courts that jurors are being prejudiced by information they have surreptitiously discovered on the Internet. If we take trial by jury as analogous to Interactive Democracy, judges as Parliament and jurors as voters, then doesn't the Internet pose equally serious problems for direct democracy?

If the ID site is designed to present the opinions of MPs and their approved sources of data, then this balances the free for all nature of the rest of the Internet. The millions of voters involved in ID also mean that false information discovered on some obscure filament of the web is unlikely to sway the final decision.

Evolving Interface

Interactive Democracy is a type of direct democracy, but at its core is the utilisation of information technology to foster debate. The design of the Internet interface - the web pages used by voters - can add lots of value to the system.

Anyone reading through these posts will realise that various ideas for the voter interface have sprung up:

• Adding initiatives
• Adding comments and questions to initiatives to create threads
• Voting and supporting
• Changing your vote after it is cast
• Questioning governments
• Calling for information and studies
• Listing Plus, Minus and Interesting Points
• Using unbiased search engines
• Linking to government reports
• Facilitating Liquid Leadership

Given that these ideas have evolved over time, it would be prudent to allow users of the system to make suggestions for new improvements of the system and allow them to register their complaints and problems.

Estonia

In Estonia all cabinet papers are available online and cabinet decisions are reported on the web as they happen! Their electronic system also allows participation by ministers who may be abroad.

The BBC wrote "With the click of a mouse a new draft law is passed by Estonia's government - welcome to one of the world's most high-tech cabinet rooms."

This early power point explains the issues of direct democracy, Estonian style.

"The web can fracture"

"Even when people engage in political debate on the web they often talk to people they already agree with. Liberal blogs tend to link to other liberal blogs; environmentalists connect with other environmentalists. The web can fracture democratic debate into partisan spaces where people of like mind gather together; democracy depends on creating public spaces where people of different minds debate and resolve their differences."

Charles Leadbeater in We-Think.

The proposed Interactive Democracy system is a formal way of introducing ideas into a public forum. It provides a system of peer and parliamentary review but does not prescribe where or how public debates should be held. If ID is done correctly, these debates will emerge on TV, on the radio, in the papers, in political parties, on the web, at work, with union members, in professional journals, among friends and family in the pub and over the dinner table. All these natural channels will be given the impetus that comes from taking part.

Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle's comment that Democracy is "monstrous, loud, blatant, inarticulate as the voice of chaos" may strike a chord with some. (His description of economics as "the dismal science" may be applauded by many more.)

I hope that a clear system for representing ideas, debating them and measuring their support, even in the face of loud, diverse, inarticulate and chaotic points of view, would make democracy somewhat less dismal than the Yaa/Boo politics of the 1800s, or today.

The modern media, in all its guises, can help. But designing Interactive Democracy to utilise the Internet is a critical step forward. Done well it could present the pros and cons of an issue, as discussed in Parliament, engender debate and provide a secure ballot. However, we would still need systems to prevent lying by politicians and journalists, and a scientific service beyond the influence of the government.