Establishing an a-political party that advocates solely for Proportional Representation

@John Bunzl That is fantastic work John!

I am blown away continuously by the synergies that activists have in what they desire and the organisations developing from that. Please take a look at the following proposal if you have the time as the synergies to your project are uncanny. It is serving no good in my Google drive and I do not have the contacts to even begin turning this into a tangible reality. I trust it will be of value irregardless of whether you support the broad mission. I hope we can continue this discussion after you have taken a look.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/161k-utHrzubit93D8ObqQpzgEznCZEcpVgEPd92uDrw/edit?usp=sharing

There's abput an 80% overlap in there with what i have in my head. Some differences on voting mechanisms and upvoting vs proxy. Need to get mine written up. Probably biggest difference is I don't envisage a single app of choice, im thinking more of a collection of apps that create everything you need to run a democracy. But you've also recognised the foot in the door of 1 constitency is a key. I think there's another way to achieve this. Best worded as... if you value someone's opinion enough, why not pay them for it. I'm having to do a lot of learning right now, which you seem to be ahead of me on crypto currencies. Im thinking(& was going to do a masters in Data science and machine learning covering this, but wpuld take to long, so decided to just do it as an experiment insteead) is "Can public participation in Democracy be inceeased by incentivising rhem with digital currency payments?". I've left it looser than crypto, and just said digital currency, as it could just be a tokenised credit that gives you , for example more say on where the budgets are allocated if youve responded to 1,500 opinion statements and contrubuted 40 of your own, 10 of which have now been voted to policy. Its a divergence from 1 person 1 vote to , you earn your votes by participating and earning credit.

I domt think you then need to win seats. You start the system start gathering opinion, let pople have their say. But it has no power. The people recognise this and dwmand for an independent candidate that will follow the will of the people is created. This person can be rhe chair person for peoples assemblies, but should have a mandate that gives no power other than to convene, not influence.

It's interesting that you mention providing monetary incentives as it is something I initially included in the idea. The general idea is this:

Imagine a social media platform that is a sort of Facebook/twitter/LinkedIn hybrid. Every confirmed voter will receive X number of upvotes (as opposed to 1 single vote). These upvotes are used in the same way that likes are used on twitter, FB, YouTube or Reddit. They can be delegated to other voters, used to upvote contributions (comments etc), or used to vote in perpetual referendums. A perpefutañ referendum is simply a referendum that lasts for perpetuity. Every decision will be represented with a referendum (for example "should we abolish the house of lords"). The flow of all upvotes around the system can be thought of like the flow of money around the economy. they express the desires and wishes of the populace. The holder of each upvote would receive an interest payment or dividend for as long as they held the upvote. this would incentivize people to politically participate and also improve the quality of their contributions.

That's the gist of the idea. Can explain in further detail if you like.

regarding how we might begin, I was thinking perhaps we could set up a charity or non profit. the goal of which would be to 'enhance and improve democracys worldwide'. donations would go into the pot where everyone will use the upvote system (or whatever other system that is decided upon) to decide on the distribution of these funds in a decentralised and democratic manner. we would use the charity as a sort of test bed for the app development.

Hi Jay, Thanks for sending the document. I took a look. While I share your overall aims, I respectfully suggest that Simpol offers a far more elegant and faster route to achieving them and is demonstrating that through the number and variety of MPs in various countries that already support it. Be that as it may, it would be good to discuss both further if you'd like. You can contact me at [email protected]

Want to share this system overview. Working on turning into a presentation. How to replace Representative democracy with a functional, parallel system. (Have a read up on vTaiwan) Starts off as a consulting platform driven by open access data.. data feeds are there already from Open Gov APIs. Needs a dozen hackathons each year! Then you form a party. Don't waste energy on PR... straight to election under FPTP. The system is self organisimg, decentralised. Elected members are basically chairs of discussion groups. Any one can vote if they study the debates. Or they can nominate a vetted proxy (political party, campaign group etc) And change proxies at any time for any new legislation. Parliament is replaced by citizens assemblies. Only thing left is the civil service to actually do the work.

I have just realised that I have two accounts: This one and @Jason Farthing .. so for the record, I am also the original poster.

@John Bunzl I have emailed you John.

@Simon Heath That looks profoundly thought out but I am afraid I can barely read the text, my fault I am sure. You say "starts off as a consulting platform driven by open access data". Could you expand please.

Also, "needs a dozen hackathons". do you mean to create the system itself?

And when you say "form a party directly and go straight to election", how do you propose to get around the problems of the entrenchment of safe seats? UKIP have 15-20% support yet never get a seat because support is scattered. I assume it would be the same if you formed a party. I don't think a party is necessary. Independents working as a block would be just as effective without all of the polarization that party politics contains. No?

I'm working on a presentation as i know it looks like a sketch. Will come back when its done.

The whole approach is based on trying ro sell the idea to the (international) hackathom community. Not just coders, but researchers, designers, and even people who dont work in System building... the users as they have to be able to understand what and why and how. At least a dozen... maybe hundreds of hackathons. They say, if people believe in the goal they woll work for free. Building in training for junior team members is part of the plan.

Open access data is already publushed by the government on many .gov.uk sites. Via something we call an API, or application programming interface. This allows anyone to write code and pull in data from that service. Great example... no 10 petitions... where i would want to start sourcing "Generate" ideas. This is a link to the data sets published just for parliament.

https://explore.data.parliament.uk/?learnmore=e-Petitions

But most departments publish their data too. (I've worked for HMRC, MoJ, NHS, Insolvency Service, Apprenticeships service) and all have some form of public API or data publications. For now lets focus on Westminster...

So we get this data, take it into a new system like pol.is, and ask people to make comments on it. Find what people approve of and what they disapprove of (something missing in ePetitions).

The diagram goes through the flow of an idea to implenentation, with the systems snd process to get public involvement along the way. So is web based, some is citizens assemblies appointed by sortition, some is public nominated / voted.

The reference to a consultation platform, is that at first this system is parallel to Westminster, it has no decision making powers and is run by volunteers. Some crowd funding is needed to run the cloud platforms and fund meetings. When you get to sortition, we then need to get gov on board. If not, and there are enough system users thinking this system is worthy, and the government are blocking it to retain power, that's when the voting platform needs to be built. What's known as fluid or liquid democracy, allowing you to vote on issues or assign them to a proxy... a party, campaign group or other pre-approved organisation. For a start it can still be run in parallel to government, but the public can express their wishes and be ignored. It's at this point where you form a party of independent candidates who pledge to do the wishes of the voting system. By this point if it all works as expected you will be looking at (in my head) greater thsn 60% of people voting for an independent candidate, who doesn't make a load of promises and fails to deliver, but will react to the pressing issues as they occur, consult the public and vote accordingly.

To be ready for this, on grass roots level, I'm just starting work to setup a Flatpack council takeover. ;) The thinking is that this system won't be ready for 2024, more like 2029. Bit its a long term project. It could go mainstream, get funding and staff but I'm thinking more of a wikipedia project than Facebook.

Once it works, you can roll the system out anywhere in the world, and give power to the people. Democracy 2.0. The End ;)

Just one point i missed... why a party.

2 reasons:

1) Being an officially registered party gets you access to the full electorol roll data so you can contact people to tell them what you are doing. That's the most important reason.

2) Having a party of independents allows you to become the goverment if you win most seats. Likewise on local councils. If you have 500 independents (not in a party) but the tories get 71 and labour get 69 and 10 more others the tories get to form the goverment.

Maybe this is even more important. Than 1 lol.

Now you could ignore all this system stuff, get a flat pack council, run a primary to get 1 of the councillor nominated as a parliamentary canididate (or open up to anyone), put them through selection, then send them off to Westminster, and run a bunch of peoples assemblies (as opposed to citizen assemblies) for any issues they need to consult on. But doing it digitally makes it quicker as long as you solve the issue of equality of access to put in your opinion. That's where the fluid democracy part comes in.

Hello Simon,

I have been in this space for 5 years – the need is for a Govt of National Unity Party – fully registered – all those opposed the Tory – UKIP Dictatorship in the making – need to join together on common ground that is young – you and Old
me

It takes money = Crowd Fund – it will need a few known people – such as Caroline Lucas – Gary Neville -- Garry Lineker

Have to make it fully public that Labour Leaders could have stopped this and Brexit twice – they are the reason we have Liar Johnson and Brexit they are another colour of Liars.

It is no good saying “Global” you need to concentrate on UK – start small and get the millions of smart young people on side – Full Reset of the UK – get Tory influence out – 6 x Regional Assemblies with a % guaranteed Independent members
10 Assemblies - Council of Britain taken from these Assemblies – not as open to Lobbying as not permanent members – Make Lying by Politicians a Criminal Offence -- it is after all Fraud.

Al Scott

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