A New Party Dedicated to Implementing Public Voting

[Ed Pastore]

Hi, Rhett.

I'm one of the founders of the Metagovernment project (feel free to join our list server!). Metagovernment (and in many ways Votorola, who's members are very active in Metagovernment) is more focused on the end-goal of freedom from representation by building sophisticated systems that enable for more consensus-oriented direct democracy.

I have been critical of the mixed format you propose because in many ways it's a sloppy hack onto a broken system. However, as I look at the amount of time it will take to get Metagovernment's objectives mainstreamed, and the horrible trend of anti-democracy in American politics, I have been deeply considering founding an American mixed-format party very much like what you are doing. I haven't finished my soul-searching and committed to it yet, but I think I am very close to doing so. My heart is still in Metagovernment, but I think there might be a way to make this a worthwhile stepping stone, while Metagov and associated softwares continue to develop.

My approach differs from yours in several notable ways, so I'd like to discuss them with you. Cooperation is certainly better than competition in this regard.

I've only written up some of my approach, but I'll at least spell out the differences between ours and see what you think.

First, I think that for a party to have a serious chance at taking power on a grand scale, it has to have a serious name. UVote might have some appeal with a younger crowd, but something more official sounding is going to resonate better with a wider audience (by the way, a lot of my background is in marketing). I was considering using the "Open Party" as the name.

In terms of deployment stages, instead of creating the system first, my intention was to start fundraising first. I have some pretty good plans for actuating that. Once we have money, the rest becomes much easier... including building the system.

In terms of systems, I don't think people should be able to nominate themselves as much as they should be elected in something much like a party primary... but through online voting of course. Technically, the individual should be irrelevant because they just do what the website-votes tell them to do, but in American legislation it's more complex than that. There are a lot of times when procedural votes come up and need to be voted on quickly, so there isn't time to collect public input. In this regard, the rep needs to be trusted to act in what they believe would be the will of their constituents if a vote had been possible (and then they will be required to publish their reasoning).

Then in terms of a voting system for telling the representative what to do, I think something like Votorola may be overkill. All we need is something which allows a yes/no vote, since it is to tell them how to cast a vote on a known issue. The place where I see Votorola or a similar system working best is on proposed legislation. However (and this part is very important), those votes would need to require greater than a simple majority to cause the rep to introduce them. By requiring a strong-majority (like 67%), we create the framework for the eventual migration to a truly free system, where we can fully dispense with the representatives. Such a system cannot possibly work in a majority-rule paradigm and it is vital that that aspect be introduced to the public at the beginning.

Finally, I was planning on taking my idea to the community of Metagovernment and some other groups before publishing it. An integral part of this sort of movement is that no one person can come up with all the best ideas. The wisdom of crowds truly works here. By building the idea among a group, we have better assurance that a wider audience would find it acceptable.

So that's where I stand. As I noted, I haven't committed to this path yet, but if I do, that's the way I'd like to pursue it. Can you see ways for us to cooperate or at least not compete in this space?

Ed Pastore
http://metagovernment.org/wiki/User:Ed_Pastore


On Jun 4, 2013, at 6:47 PM, Rhett Pepe wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I'm the founder of UVoteParty.org. This is a new political party attempting
> to practically infiltrate Representative Democracy with Direct Democracy.
> If I get some money together to pay you, would you consider helping to get
> a verifiable and secure voting system together on UVoteParty.org?
> 
> Depending on the reaction I get, I'll likely run for city council next year
> under this platform.
> 
> I'm thinking of integrating HeliosVoting code with Joomla forums and some
> method of voter verification to start.
> 
> What you are doing seems much more involved, but I thought I'd ask if you
> might be interested.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Rhett
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