The process.

The problems I see with simple majority voting go deeper than the distortions and propaganda in our awful, and awfully inconsistent, media.

If citizens could create binding policies by simple majority voting, we could end up with many restrictive laws which could be quite upsetting to huge minorities of the population. Some of those laws could actively contradict the intentions of OTHER laws. It would depend on what gets voted on, and who framed the voting question(s), and why they framed it that way.

Of course, good education and media will tend to make more people reasonable over time. In fact, I think most people agree on most issues already-- but, those aren't the issues that get voted on. For instance, I bet over 2/3 of Americans right now would vote for a variety of campaign finance reform ideas, if they directly could. But obviously, that's not how the federal politics work. Instead, legislators lock horns on issues which have been precisely calculated to practically divide a nation in half.

Supermajority isn't harder to do than simple majority, IMO; it just requires a more inclusive attitude regarding the stakeholders in a given level of society.

The possibility of laws being made that contradict other laws is huge if the layout of the voting system isn't highly structured, there also needs to be a ratification process if this happens to decide which vote takes precedence.

With the question of majorities it's a hard one, you can hardly expect every person to vote on every issue, on the other hand it becomes possible for small factions to push through policy in their interests because the public didn't notice.

The first problem requires that we have sections for every aspect of governance and that votes are put through the correct sections.

The only way I can see the other being solved is by hyrbridising representative democracy with direct democracy

Certainly very much agree with Greg Cassel's last comments. Also the link to the TED talk -Link at the very top of the page is very much worthwhile watching (thanks Joum)

@robhayward

Loomio could still be a valuable tool for this process, however, the decisions made could feed into a wiki that would act as a living document for the evolution of policy and legislation.

I think this is a great idea. This is already basically how wikipedia works (there are talk pages behind every wiki page). I think that those pages could be improved a lot with a loomio-style system for discussion.

I think even in a situation where it's somewhat subjective, and it comes to votes, this type of discussion is really important. Not only for the immediate decision, but also for implementing that decision and any future decisions.

@dnephin
Thanks. I am currently in the process of launching a site running on the wikimedia platform for this purpose (anyone interested in helping please PM me).
Having been to a couple of Wikipedia meet-ups, one of the major issues is editing wars.
As you say, a loomio style system could be a great improvement on this.

@rorytb
Perhaps Wikis could also bring a much needed structural element that could avoid the contradiction and duplication of laws/legislation. They are perfect for mapping out vast, complex and intertwining subject matter in an organized fashion.

@directadmin you said ..

i believe the ted talk and others talking about this representative based DD, are a good place to transition through since just throwing a true direct democracy at people would be a fatal mistake.

there is a lot to be reworked in this kind of model, but there is more wrong with our system than just the way we vote, and i think we should use the opportunity of governance change to discuss this and come up with alternative suggestions.

I agree with this position and like @dnephin and @robhayward have bee looking at software tools and platforms that may help us work towards a better solution.

The issues facing this group who have expressed an interest in Online Direct Democracy are complex and varied. The "process" outlined by @lbjoum in the initial post I see as a starting point for discussion rather than a solution.

Today I stumbled across another platform called whatleads.to that describes itself as follows:

CauseHub is here to help with mechanics of collaboration. Wherever different people want to work on a shared aim, CauseHub provides the technology and support to make it happen.

Of particular interest is the What leads to an Intelligently Self Governed Society example.

I zoomed in on the aspect that I am most interested in to give a visual example of how the site is structured.

The above attachment is a little simplistic, here is another to show how it is "connected" to other areas.

I have signed up and started adding some of my own steps and comments to see how it works...

There are many decisions that need to be made that are not subjective in nature. Majority opinion should not necessarily be weighed more highly than quantifiable and qualifiable facts. For these decisions I am a fan of an “evidence based democracy”. Online tools such as wikis could be used to facilitate the decentralised collaboration of experts and knowledgable persons to create policy and plans for things like infrastructure, energy production etc. @robhayward

Rob,

Just a thought but I've previously suggested a feature that would be "Agreements" that get added to a discussion. Those could be set off to the side so people jumping into an existing discussion could get a quick idea at the foundation and not rehash certain topics.

Great line of thought on evidence based democracy... ABC provides great fact checking.

@BenBurton
As the community grows and the discussions become longer and more complex an "agree" function or some other conversation summery tool could be very useful.
I think the tough balance for Loomio will be to add useful features whilst retaining the simplicity and usability that is its main strength.
In my opinion, for what it's worth, I think that it is better to keep it simple and play to strengths, accept limitations and integrate wil other complementary platforms (like wikis!) which have their own set of strengths and weaknesses.

@pete1
I just had a look at ABC fact check. It's a very interesting concept and I think that investigative journalism has a huge role to play in the checking of facts.
However, ABC is owned by Disney and represents all the old problems associated with a centrally controlled media narrative: spin, bias, propaganda, special interests etc.
I would advocate for a decentralized checking of facts: peer review on a huge scale, where individual biases are somewhat neutralized.

@robhayward

My thought was to leverage the tools Loomio already has. We can make a proposal, discuss it and vote. In the end the votes are tallied.

Instead of just making proposals, Loomio could have a different category than proposal. I'm calling it "agreements". Propose a "fact", discuss it, vote on it and tally the votes. If the community agrees, then the agreement is published in the timeline.

Technically possible. Hopefully not a huge burden to implement.

@BenBurton
Very nice! Could be a great way to do decentralised peer-review.
Are there examples of Loomio already being used to effectiely discuss/evaluate subjects rich in evidence/statistics/complexity?

@robhayward @BenBurton

I agree with Rob on the "agree" button point. Efficiency is really key for a lot of people trying to participate in decision-making on a more regular basis while still coping with all of the other obligations of life. It would be a very easy point for Loomio to integrate and provide a big pay-off in terms of simplifying the process.

@rorytb @dnephin

As far as drafting laws is concerned - this may well be more complicated than you would think. Some legal agreements may be tens of thousands of pages long. All lawyers are now specialists and there are even specialists among the specialists. Also, you won't find most law in laws - it is a lot about interpretation. Thus, understanding law necessitates reading many judgments and commentaries. Probably only 3% of any lawyer's reading is the law itself (maybe not even that).
One prong to this is, of course, simplification and (especially in common law countries) codification. Sometimes law is needlessly complicated.
But some of the time it is just bloody complicated because it has to be, and therefore I would say that instead of trying to write legislation with some combined group knowledge (which only someone with at least 20 years' experience in that field would actually have), it would be far more efficient to simply commandeer the resources of those experts and order them to write laws that achieve the general objective you are aiming at, i.e. make them take care of all of the details of getting there.

@roslyn

One issue I see with Loomio is that in order to help simplify or improve a process the process should be clearly defined. A simple flow-chart of the decision making process would help people use and improve Loomio.

The more I read and research this issue the bigger and more complex a beast it becomes.

For example, this discussion topic is titled "the process" and @lbjoum outlined three main points raised in the original discussion. To summarise

1> Distributed (Internet) Voting Platform
2> Platform presents Parliament's decisions / choices
3> Elected representative votes according to Platform result

@BenBurton I referenced a tool earlier that is currently not open source but is free to use. It is a type of flow chart and is still in early stages of development but I created a topic about Improving Collaborative Discussion and Decision Making Tools.

We can only simplify or improve a process if we fully understand that process as Ben pointed out. Textual technical descriptions, documents and explanations are not only difficult to follow but also difficult to write.

For example :

Is this discussion about Loomio in particular or "the process" of distributed democracy in more general terms?

i for one dont think its easy to do.

i favour the following progression:
1.using internet "SOL" style system to initially have represntatives do as we request.
this is part of rolling out phase 2

1. establishment of in home access to a direct democratic network and removal of politicians .. saying that, i dont trust the infrastructure we have for internet right now, and i think a new open source code should be written to do the actual direct democracy voting and polling, on a new second internet, or even local community network then somehow transported to the overall society/global tallies

i have about 15 years on development of this kind of system, and ideas on how to reduce complexity and ensure that it is difficult to corrupt and usurp.
direct democracy is extremely sensitive to well targeted media campaigns and in this society, time restraints.
changing to any kind of direct democracy requires massive societal changes on almost every level, so its a good opportunity to discuss every aspect of society and ensure it matches what people need..

i would like to invite other people into this discussion if someone could message me and tell me how.

i would also like to bring some of my existing base models in as well, but think they should be individual topics.
is there a preferred method for this or a format we shoudl use?

I'm glad to see joum has come across to seeing this as a global issue (:

@directadmin you wrote ...

changing to any kind of direct democracy requires massive societal changes on almost every level, so its a good opportunity to discuss every aspect of society and ensure it matches what people need..

One of the main problems we have is that only a very small number of people (proportional to population) are actually even considering this - despite millions of people actively participating in phone, text and app voting for "trivial" purposes like x-factor format television shows.

In relation to your first point

Using internet “SOL” style system to initially have representatives do as we request.

I think it would be useful to create a list of current candidates around the world who are working towards or willing to take on this mantle.

So far, here in the UK I have come across James Smith (via the Loomio Introductions) who is standing for election this year (2015) not in my area unfortunately but still interesting reading non the less.

Something Else Policies

Anybody interested in "the process" or thinking about running for election may be interested in taking a look at the above link. Personally I think "policies" should the reason candidates or parties are elected and also to what they should be held accountable to once elected.

I actually think SOL wasn't on too bad of an idea for transitioning, we should all run for a position. every member of the party in every seat of every election in every westminster democracy world wide.

but we need to be clear and have a blueprint we can stand behind.

the same blueprint for all of us. that's the key.

I agree with @alandavison that very few people will vote for a DD government at this point. Firstly due to lack of awareness of the option but also due to the unknown of what policies created through DD would actually look like.
This is a huge step into the unknown and too much of a leap of faith for most. For that reason @lbjoum my vision of the transition goes a little more like this:
1). Create an open wiki platform for people to contribute and form theoretical policy in all areas of governance.
This would serve 2 purposes: a) Act as a mirror to hold up against current governments and show how different current policy is to how the population would self-govern, thus a useful tool to pressurize reform. b) As and when the time comes to enter global elections, people would know exactly what concrete platform they are voting for. The policies would continue to evolve but it would remove a large portion of the unknown.
2). Enter the platform in all possible elections around the world to gain awareness and hopefully even win some seats.
3). If/when the system gains traction, I can envision a time when the online system is run in tandem with a representative system. The representatives job is simple to enact the will of the wiki.
4). From this point I think that it wouldn't be long until people realized that the politicians are actually redundant in the system and it can become a truly decentralized self-organizing system.

@alandavison

Is this discussion about Loomio in particular or “the process” of distributed democracy in more general terms?

Although loomio could be used to conduct DD I don't think its present design is suited to the task; so I see this as a discussion in general terms.

One of the main problems we have is that only a very small number of people (proportional to population) are actually even considering this

I agree. But every time I describe the idea to someone, they love it.

I think it would be useful to create a list of current candidates around the world who are working towards or willing to take on this mantle.

We NEED a global conversation. All the small pockets of activity need to collaborate. This would also mean that we need a common understanding/agreement about the design. Perhaps this is more difficult. Therefore I see the need for a platform that individual organisations / politicians / parties can customise to their preference.

@directadmin

i would like to invite other people into this discussion if someone could message me and tell me how.

Get them to join loomio and this group -
Global Direct Democracy Working Group. The group is open so they might be able to read our conversations without joining.

but we need to be clear and have a blueprint we can stand behind.

Yes. We will be able to agree on a rough outline but people will not agree on all the details. This is similar to how people think loomio should have different features.

@robhayward I agree that we need something 'real' that people can 'see'.

One of the ways direct democracy can work is to reduce the jurisdiction of each. People fear that all consuming direct democracy (or any big govt) would swallow the world.

It's a fear I have too.

What i think is

1. Underpinned rights and constitution. This is common law and rights for all.

2. Local direct democracy. Small zones that are self sufficient in power, food, water and jobs. The ability have local edicts that cannot break rights or constitution. It is hard to get agreements among millions of people. But by using small zones we can get a more even flow to democracy.

3. Interconnected zones. For shared direct democracy amongst the small zones. Sometimes all people will need a say on some topic

4 media changes. The media is the enemy of the people. It can easily be used to sway an opinion. And any direct democracy needs real accurate information in the public eye or it becomes another controlled system.

If we can avoid building one big global government and instead join together local communities in governance we will get far more support.

Everywhere Westminster democracy exists we need to be. Our current masters use Westminster as the tools to enslave us.

I'm going to have a webinar to lay out my work so far. It's only my starting point, so I'm not trying to bulldoze this movement. But I'd like to get input from as many as possible.

I think there are many great ideas out there and once we work out our format for change we can make a real start on something crowd sourced.

@directadmin I totally agree with your point about localised direct democracy. It makes the most sense as a starting point, far easier to achieve and it's better to solve glitches at a small scale before aiming for anything larger. Even if a larger system evolved from it I personally see small communities being the foundation of a broader network

I came across this link, I haven't read the book yet but am about to start reading the 50 free pages that are online - will report back when I am in a position to comment...

Rebooting Democracy - The Book

Browsing the Reboot Democracy Web Site they describe themselves as follows...

We are an international, nonpartisan network of citizens campaigning for a more democratic future.

We are taking the first steps in an exciting, ambitious journey to bring about the kind of change politicians always promise—and never deliver. We count on you wanting to be a part of it.

I can edit my previous post but lost the ability to include attachments so I will "attach" the first 50 pages of the book to this post. And for completeness I should mention that the book was written by Manuel Arriaga, a visiting research professor at New York University. He was previously on the faculty at the University of Cambridge's Judge Business School, where, for several years, he conducted research and taught courses on how organizations and individuals can become more effective decision-makers. His work has been published in leading management journals and academic reference volumes. An award-winning teacher, he continues to lecture at Cambridge.

I would think that this is exactly the kind of person that should be invited to this debate..