Slides from a presentation held in Camp Pixelache 2011

1. Initiative for a direct democracy party
'Active Democracy'
Mikko Laajola

2. Illusion of democracy
● Current representative democracy is about outsourcing power
in society
● Options are few, power is concentrated on parties
– Not representing your true, complete political identity
– Election system is forcing to do tactical compromises
– Hierarchic structure, really hard to get into power
● Closed operation system
– no effective ways to interact, excluding people from
power and decision making
– Not willing to open up, or releasing power
– Critique has almost no effect

3. Towards active democracy
● Social media enables wider political discussion and activity
– AD HOC movements (Facebook, Twitter...)
– WIKI-models for collaboration, etc.
– Distributed, dynamic, non-hierarchic networks
– Based on voluntary participation, active citizenship
– Empowering people and their political identities
● no direct power in decision making
– Hard to challenge old forms of power / parties
– Temporary movements can't create political entities
– Power in the mass movements

4. Tools for redesigning the system
● Modernisation of Dêmos "people" and Kratos "power"
● Open online parliament
– Based on Electronic Direct Democracy manifesto
– Collective opinions represented in parliament
– Aims to empower marginal voices politically
– Always politically neutral
● Allows people to participate:
– Represent themselves completely
– Create new parties and movements
– Delegate votes to trusted others in the system
– Create and collaborate on referendums
– Promote their agendas via social media, etc.

5. Tools for redesigning the system
● Liquid democracy
● Allows participation, but doesn't obligate
● Allows multiple ways of delegating votes
– simultaneous
– by agenda
– by subject (ecology, economy, etc)
– Possibility to use operands (1 OR 2 NOT 3)
● Always right to override delegate's opinion
– Delegates must make open decisions
– Monitor how your vote is working,
● Tool for the best possible personal representation

6. Tools for redesigning the system
● Collaborative referendums
● 'bugtracking' society
● Allows public and open law making (WIKI, Etherpads, etc.)
idea > versions > public support > referendum
● support threshold by elected representative average votes
– ca. 5000
– Creates “temporary representative for agenda”
– Current gov. model proposed 50 000 votes threshold for
referendum. (not really encouraging participation?)

7. Knowledge is King
● Crowdsourcing politics
● Participatory knowledge sharing allows people to create,
share, debate and process valid information on the subjects,
adding to the selected information created by the parliament
– Invites external specialists, activists,lobbyists, politicians
to take part in the collective information processing
– Creates knowledge also for other representatives to use
in decision making
– Helps to extract and label the key information (pro/con),
enabling easier decision making for public
● Values the knowledge of crowds

8. Issues
● Few rule
● Default 'undecided' weight, for example 200 votes
● Mob rule
● True democracy :)
● Anonymity / openness
● Anonymous voting
● Anonymous delegating
● Open delegates / Parties
● Debate with own identity / anonymous by request
● Experimental project, random issues might arise
● Agile development

9. Take action!
● Participate in creating the new society
● A vote for active democracy is a vote for yourself
● Promote the cause!
“Democracy is not what we have – it’s what we do.”
Frances Moore Lappé
THANK YOU!