I wrote a post a while ago about upgrading democracy. Reading it back now, it is rather wordy and my ideas have moved on a little; I think it is more important to find solutions that only a little ahead of where we are now because they are easier to implement. So here is a quick update.

The problem:
Democracy, as it is now, does not really represent the people and it is open to corruption in many ways.

The solution:
Use technology to enable the public to have a greater say.

The details:
People continue to vote in general elections as they do now. However when attending the polling station they have the option to sign up to an electronic platform.

Government continues to operate as it does, except rather than each MP getting one vote, they get a vote proportional to the number of people in their constituency. E.G. if there are 40,000,000 eligible voters and 645 MPs then each MP will have approximately 62015 votes.

People who have registered for the electronic platform can change who represents them to be any of the sitting MPs. They can do this as often as they want. When this happens, their current MP losses one vote and their new one gains one.

Why this is better:
The public can decide who represents them the most accurately, without the public having to get involved in the real nitty gritty of policy making. It does this without disenfranchising those who are not tech savy, or wanting to play a more active role in government.

Concerns:
Have to make sure the system is secure. Suggest an open source software and hardware solution to enable this.
Have to make sure the website is very easy to use.

Next step:
Once this system was settled in then it may need developing so that the public have more say in what motions are put before parliament in the first place.

Tags: democracy, upgrading

This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.