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Hi everyone, I'm one of the founders of DemocracyOS.org and The Net Party (partidodelared.org). Let me know what you think about DemocracyOS as an open source v

Hi everyone, I'm one of the founders of DemocracyOS.org and The Net Party (partidodelared.org). Let me know what you think about DemocracyOS as an open source vote & debate tool, and our political strategy with The Net Party where we have candidates committed to vote in congress according to DemocracyOS.

wslh 12y ago
Please ELI5, tl;dr, etc.
- santisiri 12y ago
  DemocracyOS is an application where you can get informed on what happens in congress, debate with other citizens in a platform that rewards the best argument and vote. The Net Party is a political party that ran for elections in Argentina with a very simple promise: its candidates are committed to always vote in Congress according to what citizens ask for in DemocracyOS. In 2013 it got 1.2% of the votes. Wasn't enough to put the candidate, but the software got officially adopted by the Congress. Since then over 350 bills where debated by citizens online. After that, political parties, NGOs and governments from a wide range of places like Tunisia, Kenya, Brazil, Spain, Ukraine, Chile, Mexico adopted DemocracyOS. We are part of the new batch of Y Combinator and in the US we launched with councilmembers from New York, San Francisco, Boston and other cities agreeing to use DemocracyOS.
  - wslh 12y ago
    Imagine a country entering in a war. People vote using DemocracyOS and decide to start the conflict. Is this good or bad?
    - santisiri 12y ago
      We know that we need to learn from experience. That's why DemocracyOS has only been adopted at local city-level where 99% of the issues debated have to do with every-day life in the city. We need to learn the right checks & balances for an app like this to protect minorities and avoid abuse. And remember: it's only the legislative power. The executive has veto power ;)
      - wslh 12y ago
        Good answer. I am looking forward to the next candidates!
      - rgbrgb 12y ago
        Interesting to think about it that way -- you jack it into just a single branch of the US government and you have some built in QA process. I'm assuming the long term goal is to connect all of these together to have a global state after they're already embedded in each country's government. All hail the internet state we build together (or our benevolent leaders who backdoor the version of DemocracyOS we're running)! In all seriousness, it's great to be able to think about using fairness algorithms [1] to literally write social contracts. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionally_fair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionally_fair
    - throwaway934848 12y ago
      Most people don't know what they're doing or don't possess enough knowledge to take good decisions on most subjects. Democracy is a stupid ruling scheme. I understand the basis of democracy, but you can't ask a lumberjack to legislate deforestation.
      - kriro 12y ago
        That's a pretty cynical point of view. And what's the alternative, handing the decisions over to a "ruling class" of elites? One could make a somewhat compelling argument that current democratic systems are pretty much a "curse of Plato" (term taken from Open Society by Popper) type of system with an extra layer of indirection above it and. I think there's at least enough evidence from other areas (broadly wisdom of the crowds) + technology is good enough these days to quickly vote on stuff to invest in more direct alternatives.
        bildung 12y ago
        No, that view could only be seen as cynical if we would be an a either-or situation - which we aren't. Another plausible path would be bolstering education, especially for the underprivileged that usually are exactly the part of the population not integrated into the political process (e.g. Germany too has a problem with continually declining voter turnout, but if you look closer that only affects the working class, for the upper classes it's still 80%). The big problem with technocratic approaches like Democracy OS or the pirate parties' liquid democracy is the amount of the population you exclude by introducing this technological barrier to political participation for e.g. old people. But as empirics trump reasoning (quite in the spirit of Popper), I hereby make the case that the net party won't have an economically compelling pension concept or health care plan for the elderly in Argentina within the next 10 years. Now we just have to wait and see ;)
        throwaway934848 12y ago
        The alternative would be for the governing class to be the most intelligent of the country. I would rather be governed by a few intellectuals than by a stupid majority.
      - 12y ago
    - andrewfong 12y ago
      There's been some research on adding a "deliberative" component to the entire process. http://cdd.stanford.edu/ http://cdd.stanford.edu/. This apparently results in different outcomes than mere voting does. There's obviously the question of whether "different" is in fact "better" and how the deliberative process is structured, but given that debate and discussion appears to be an important part of DemocracyOS, I wonder if there's any way to build upon the existing research here. If we assume that entering a war tends to be more of a rash impulsive, decision than in abstaining from violence, then building DemocracyOS in such a way so as to encourage deliberation could reduce the odds of people voting for war (or, if they do vote for war, assure others that the war is being waged for careful, thought-out reasons). Also, the Lawrence Lessig refrain that "code is law" seems particularly applicable here.
    - orbifold 12y ago
      I think it has been an established fact that the only way to convince people to go to war has been through catastrophic Pearl Harbor type events, massive propaganda and lies. It also helps to have a professional army and no draft, so that only certain sections of the population are really affected. The types of wars and foreign policy decisions the US has been engaged in are more or less inconceivable with an informed and educated electorate that could vote on them.
      - gadders 12y ago
        So you think that the US wouldn't have entered WWII if the US electorate had been more informed?
        orbifold 12y ago
        I believe that if people are not influenced by war propaganda they generally favor peaceful resolutions of conflict. This is definitely true for the recent Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but probably also true of Vietnam, US support for Saddam Hussein, the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam and so on. If I'm not mistaken public opinion in the US did not support a declaration of war against Germany before Pearl Harbor, obviously in the case of WWII the US really wasn't left with a choice after declarations of war by both Germany and Japan.
      - notahacker 12y ago
        An informed and educated public's decision to vote is also skewed by how much they care about the issue, which gives certain factions a big say in running it. Cuban Americans[1] and fanatical anticommunists care a lot more about not normalising diplomatic relations with Cuba than the general public cares about export contracts, holiday destinations and Cuban human rights not being any worse than many other countries the US has diplomatic relations with. Public sentiments are often swayed in favour of war, and have far less reason to take into account its consequences, because the public isn't punished at the ballot box if "our patriotic duty" turns out to be a farcical mistake. And when it comes to influential minorities, can we even rely on the 59% of Argentines (Yougov survey, 2012) that think military action over "las Malvinas" would be inappropriate to keep the ultra-patriotic 26% that would favour a hypothetical military solution in check? Especially with a substantial majority of that anti-war grouping believing those islands rightfully belong to Argentina anyway. The 1982 war, after all, was a desperately unpopular dictatorship's attempt to appeal to public sentiment. [1]though due to the quirk of Florida being an essential swing state in the electoral college system they've had a disproportional influence in policy under the existing system anyway...
  - karmacondon 12y ago
    The Net Party seems like it defeats the purpose of representative democracy. The system was designed to let congress people differ from their electorate on certain matters. If you take the Net Party concept (as I understand it) to it's logical conclusion, isn't that changing the basic form of government from representative to direct democracy? Or in essence saying "Nice try James Madison, but we have something different in mind"? It's great to to give citizens a forum for debate and anything that encourages communication between government and the governed is generally a good thing. Not sure how much I like the idea of making major changes to the basic process of government though, at least here in the United States. I can think of many examples of good things that might not have passed in congress if representatives had to vote the way that citizens using a particular software app wanted them to vote (slavery, income tax, segregation, healthcare). I wish you good luck and it sounds like you're doing good things. Experimentation is good, even if it poses risks.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - vidarh 12y ago
      One of the arguments against representative democracy at all was basically the same: People were supposedly too uninformed, and someone else needed to moderate their wishes. The arguments against expanding the electorate from land owners to all males in many countries were the same. The arguments against allowing women to vote, again largely along similar lines. As was the resistance to steadily lowering the voting ages. As I'm sure you can tell, I don't really buy that this would be such a huge problem. Sure, some decisions will end up different. It's not clear it will be better or worse. But personally I believe that giving people more direct ownership of decisions is valuable in itself. As is improving representation - with current systems (even proportional ones), a lot of people are very poorly represented because finding a party or candidate that fits their views and that has a chance of getting elected is near impossible. There are many mechanisms to counter the issues of an uninformed electorate, such as for example allowing people to delegate votes to representatives (possibly with indirection, so you can e.g. delegate your vote to the candidate from some minor party you agree with, knowing they'll be able to try to parlay a voting block into influence with the parties with seats), or vote "I don't care / I don't know enough about this issue to want to influence it, so I want my representative to count my vote the way they prefer", and many others, while still allowing people to take control and override for things where they do care about deeply about the outcome.
  - roel_v 12y ago
    " its candidates are committed to always vote in Congress according to what citizens ask for in DemocracyOS." Jesus that's scary, I hope you guys fail spectacularly and fast (nothing personal).
    - seykron 12y ago
      It already happened, they lost the legal status this year. It was expected, they're only entrepreneurship bullshit, they never would get real engagement from people.
      - mairwilliams 12y ago
        Oh, the guys at the Net Party would love to prove you wrong. If you are in Buenos Aires you are invited to their meeting today at 20 in Belgrano, reach them via twitter DM.
      - santisiri 12y ago
        Let me just say that we got 1.2% of the votes in a 2 million electorate election in 2013. And you (from the Pirate Party in Argentina) never got more than 20 affiliates to join.
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    > An oft-quoted story about the "coolness" of the Senate involves George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who was in France during the Constitutional Convention. Upon his return, Jefferson visited Washington and asked why the Convention delegates had created a Senate. "Why did you pour that tea into your saucer?" asked Washington. "To cool it," said Jefferson. "Even so," responded Washington, "we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it." https://www.senate.gov/legislative/common/briefing/Senate_legislative_process.htm https://www.senate.gov/legislative/common/briefing/Senate_le... This concept applies to the government as a whole as it relates to the general population. Everyone is focused on their daily lives. The point of electing a representative government is to have a group of people whose daily lives are focused on the task of running the government, and figuring out where it will go next. People outside of the government only have so much time to think about legislation, even when it's really important.
    - crdoconnor 12y ago
      >The point of electing a representative government is to have a group of people whose daily lives are focused on the task of running the government. People outside of the government only have so much time to think about legislation, even when it's really important. This is post-facto rationalization for why the government operates the way it does. Most governments transitioned from a dictatorship to representative democracy because the masses reached breaking point over a particular issue and demanded greater power, together. Representative democracy exists due to the compromise that was brooked at these points between the ruling classes and the ruled. If anything, it exists as a sop by the ruling classes, who from the very beginning tried to exclude people from voting as they introduced it (only property owners, no blacks, no slaves, no peasants, etc.) Direct democracy is in no way incompatible with the idea that "we don't have enough time to think about legislation", provided you are given the option to delegate your votes to somebody whom you trust who does have time. Any sensible system would do this and let you revoke or move your delegation at any time on any topic. And no, that is not just representative democracy reinvented. I would delegate most of my votes in a direct democracy to my retired parents.
  - seykron 12y ago
    Bullshit. Only administrators can upload new bills, and there're a lot of comments here explaining why it is a awful piece of software. And you really don't understand how a representative system works in practice if you keep thinking it is possible to get elected and tell your legislative what to do from a software. It is one of the most naive thoughts I read in my life.
    - piamancini 12y ago
      we are launching the hub now where everyone, even the pirate party in argentina can have their own democracyos and raise their own issues. Stay tuned
  - bglusman 12y ago
    You mention spain, is the Spanish Internet Party[1] using DemocracyOS? Are you considering incorporating Liquid Democracy features/ideas into DemocracyOS? They have an open source Rails app aimed at this idea[2] that I was very excited about/helped out on... curious how you see Liquid Democracy's problems/potential [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Party_%28Spainw%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Party_%28Spainw%29 [2]https://github.com/PartidoDeInternet/AgoraOnRails https://github.com/PartidoDeInternet/AgoraOnRails
kriro 12y ago
Are you in contact with the Pirate parties of different countries? Your party sounds like it uses the idea of "liquid democracy" which is discussed quite a bit by the Pirate parties if memory serves right. I think the German one at least discussed some tools to use/build for the entire vote/poll mechanism which I assume is built into your collaboration product. You'll probably end up in some upcoming startup books as an unusual MVP (is it M?). "Found a political party". Good luck, political change is really hard and I do like the concept of more direct wisdom of the crowd like politics. I'm not sure about your product but access to governments and understanding how they work is pretty valuable. Government tools tend to be internally-viral (one community usues it, it spreads). I'm curious if the fact that you are also a party might be dangerous for the product though. Pretty often useful stuff is blocked on principle so for example if your party seems "left", conservative city councils might not use your tool due to that (likewise the other way around). Pretty interesting problem to have.
- th0br0 12y ago
  They even went ahead and implemented a 'liquid feedback' tool. Which seems quite similar to democracyOS? http://liquidfeedback.org/ http://liquidfeedback.org/
  - orbifold 12y ago
    While they were doing that they squandered all their political potential by failing to elect strong, media competent leaders and consequently were dismantled by mass media. Of course the media was relatively keen on doing that anyways, with a few exceptions in the more intellectual news papers.
    - th0br0 12y ago
      I agree, but the parent was referring to this tool I believe.
- joeyspn 12y ago
  > I think the German one at least discussed some tools to use/build for the entire vote/poll mechanism which I assume is built into your collaboration product I think they built this tool (or considered using) Agora Voting[0] (Django/Python) which as far as I know, has put A LOT of effort into security and fraud-prevention (PKI, Mix-net's, etc), IMO the biggest issue here. It's a soft derived from the Spanish Internet Party, I guess it's the equivalent of the argentian side from which DemocracyOS came into existence, or at least both draw a lot of parallelisms. I wonder if it wouldn't be better for all these DD parties [1] to just unite forces and focus on a single tool... The idea is certainly interesting. [0] https://github.com/agoravoting https://github.com/agoravoting [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_direct_democracy_parties http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_direct_democracy_partie...
slackson 12y ago
This is the sort of place real change is going to come from. Transparent public information, that at the very least will shame politicians into voting in the interests of the people. I understand it's probably not a top priority, but it'd be amazing if prediction markets on the impacts of policies could be included in this tool. It wouldn't even need to be real money, just a way to keep track of people's performance, and weight their impact on later markets accordingly. This would enable true access to the "wisdom of the crowd", and allow citizens to have a proper insight into how candidates and citizens perform in terms of forecasting the impact of policies, and making decisions based on that information.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  There's already plenty of accurate forecasting available, but it's suppressed and distorted by elite interests. So most voters either have no access to it, or they're told expedient lies by the media. The US has an large organised mass of 'think tanks', 'foundations', and other propaganda fronts which exists solely to lie to the public and directly influence policy makers. Debate is not the answer to this. You can only restore real democracy by making the distortions explicit. That means logging and listing all lobbying efforts, making sure no off-record cash transactions go unreported, and removing anyone who lies to the public for profit from any kind of political influence. DemocracyOS is tinkering around the edges of this. Local democracy is a start, but it won't start to have an effective influence until national policy power is distributed more intelligently.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
rbanffy 12y ago
Wishing you good luck and hoping (rather selfishly) this luck is contagious to Brazil (where I live). A long time ago I worked on Interlegis, which is a tool for legislature workflow automation that's used, as far as I know, widely in Brazil. I see some interesting synergies there for you at a later evolutionary stage.
- zby 12y ago
  There is http://partidopirata.org/ http://partidopirata.org/ there :)
- santisiri 12y ago
  Good news: check http://euvoto.org http://euvoto.org it's a start in Sao Paulo!
UserRights 12y ago
From your description I am missing one important idea that you should communicate clearly: you, we and nobody else currently wants to have online voting - what we want to have, are tools that enable transparency and gathering of information, also discussions and preparation of decisions, but the final decision is something you do NOT want to do online. See this talk from 31C3: http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6344_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201412281400_-_security_analysis_of_estonia_s_internet_voting_system_-_j_alex_halderman.html http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6344_-_en_-_... If you still believe that online voting is doable and a great thing, please contact Mr. Halderman and talk to him or read about his work: https://jhalderm.com/ https://jhalderm.com/ Also I recommend to do some research what the german pirate party is using regarding democracy tools - they have a lot of experience not only coding such tools, but also with real life usage. A good start could be https://liqd.net/en/ https://liqd.net/en/ here you can find the adhocracy platform: https://github.com/liqd/adhocracy/ https://github.com/liqd/adhocracy/ which seems to be in a much better developed state than what I see on democracyOS - but maybe there are many things not visible right now to me, so sorry for this criticism. Adhocracy is currently in use by several organizations and they have lots of real life experience, especially with user adaption. An interesting application of adhocracy is https://offenekommune.de/ https://offenekommune.de/ Another interesting tool for organizing (really big) meetings: http://openslides.org/en/ http://openslides.org/en/ and of course the brilliant idea of Bundes-Git, a law-making platform: http://okfnlabs.org/blog/2012/12/13/bundesgit-german-laws-on-github.html http://okfnlabs.org/blog/2012/12/13/bundesgit-german-laws-on... Maybe the best way to get some overview would be to contact the awesome people at https://okfn.org/ https://okfn.org/ - good luck!
UserRights 12y ago
Well, I have to come back to you with a few very basic things that should change immediately if you want to show respect to users and their privacy and would like your business to be taken serious by NGOs and political activists around the globe: * there is NO https://democracyos.org/ https://democracyos.org/ - how deep are your tec guys sleeping??? * please remove the privacy invading tracking links from your website. All of them. Now. These two issues would be most important to gain some credibility in Europe, where most people still do not accept to have their web privacy delivered to x companies without being asked. This is especially true for a site that offers discussion about political issues - a very heavy fauxpas and you should stop doing anything else and prioritize fixing these issues, these are absolutely vital things for a "democracy enhancing platform". * I can not download your manifesto pdf without logging into slideshare. Here again I am forced to pay for your pdf by giving user account information. Why are you letting a third party company take your pdf documents as hostages? I am sure your web servers will not die if you just let people download the pdf from e.g. https://democracyos.org/manifesto.pdf https://democracyos.org/manifesto.pdf These things should change before you open your site to the wider public - too many people will see these as proof for "business guys hijacking democracy software market".
- santisiri 12y ago
  1) You're right, we got the SSL certificate ready and we'll be deploying it ASAP. 2) Good point, will look into that. 3) Will put the PDF as you suggested. Thanks!
zby 12y ago
Why it is 'Open Source' and not 'Free Software'?
- dublinben 12y ago
  More palatable to investors, probably. It's harder to turn around and sell out when you've just been offering "open source" rather than truly free software. They rather miss the point though, if they're concerned about democracy and politics.
- santisiri 12y ago
  It is both. But still the OS in the title plays with the idea of Operating System or Open Society among other interpretations. Read it how you want it.
  - zby 12y ago
    I was actually referring to http://democracyos.org/ http://democracyos.org/ - it says "Open Source Join a community that's hacking the future of democracy today. We are 100% open source with an MIT license."
mintplant 12y ago
What's to stop you from fudging the results on DemocracyOS and making whatever choices you want with The Net Party?
maceo 12y ago
As a long-time supporter of your efforts, I have a few suggestions. 1) The name 'The Net Party' isn't going to cut it in the US. Think beyond the fact that you must be connected to participate (e.g. The Popular Party). 2) Don't stay in SV for too long. You can't risk losing touch with the people who are using the software. 3) Your fate will be decided by how easy it is to use your interface. It needs more simplification. The call to action on every page needs to be more clear (e.g. the voting buttons on the /law page ought to be fixed). 4) Look to history for examples. German Pirate Party's LiquidFeedback and Switzerland/Estonia are obvious examples, but there's more. What can you learn from Mondragon in Spain or SEMCO in Brazil? Labor movements that operated on direct democracy? Quaker decision-making?

wslh 12y ago

Please ELI5, tl;dr, etc.

santisiri 12y ago
DemocracyOS is an application where you can get informed on what happens in congress, debate with other citizens in a platform that rewards the best argument and vote. The Net Party is a political party that ran for elections in Argentina with a very simple promise: its candidates are committed to always vote in Congress according to what citizens ask for in DemocracyOS. In 2013 it got 1.2% of the votes. Wasn't enough to put the candidate, but the software got officially adopted by the Congress. Since then over 350 bills where debated by citizens online. After that, political parties, NGOs and governments from a wide range of places like Tunisia, Kenya, Brazil, Spain, Ukraine, Chile, Mexico adopted DemocracyOS. We are part of the new batch of Y Combinator and in the US we launched with councilmembers from New York, San Francisco, Boston and other cities agreeing to use DemocracyOS.
- wslh 12y ago
  Imagine a country entering in a war. People vote using DemocracyOS and decide to start the conflict. Is this good or bad?
  - santisiri 12y ago
    We know that we need to learn from experience. That's why DemocracyOS has only been adopted at local city-level where 99% of the issues debated have to do with every-day life in the city. We need to learn the right checks & balances for an app like this to protect minorities and avoid abuse. And remember: it's only the legislative power. The executive has veto power ;)
    - wslh 12y ago
      Good answer. I am looking forward to the next candidates!
    - rgbrgb 12y ago
      Interesting to think about it that way -- you jack it into just a single branch of the US government and you have some built in QA process. I'm assuming the long term goal is to connect all of these together to have a global state after they're already embedded in each country's government. All hail the internet state we build together (or our benevolent leaders who backdoor the version of DemocracyOS we're running)! In all seriousness, it's great to be able to think about using fairness algorithms [1] to literally write social contracts. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionally_fair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionally_fair
  - throwaway934848 12y ago
    Most people don't know what they're doing or don't possess enough knowledge to take good decisions on most subjects. Democracy is a stupid ruling scheme. I understand the basis of democracy, but you can't ask a lumberjack to legislate deforestation.
    - kriro 12y ago
      That's a pretty cynical point of view. And what's the alternative, handing the decisions over to a "ruling class" of elites? One could make a somewhat compelling argument that current democratic systems are pretty much a "curse of Plato" (term taken from Open Society by Popper) type of system with an extra layer of indirection above it and. I think there's at least enough evidence from other areas (broadly wisdom of the crowds) + technology is good enough these days to quickly vote on stuff to invest in more direct alternatives.
      - bildung 12y ago
        No, that view could only be seen as cynical if we would be an a either-or situation - which we aren't. Another plausible path would be bolstering education, especially for the underprivileged that usually are exactly the part of the population not integrated into the political process (e.g. Germany too has a problem with continually declining voter turnout, but if you look closer that only affects the working class, for the upper classes it's still 80%). The big problem with technocratic approaches like Democracy OS or the pirate parties' liquid democracy is the amount of the population you exclude by introducing this technological barrier to political participation for e.g. old people. But as empirics trump reasoning (quite in the spirit of Popper), I hereby make the case that the net party won't have an economically compelling pension concept or health care plan for the elderly in Argentina within the next 10 years. Now we just have to wait and see ;)
      - throwaway934848 12y ago
        The alternative would be for the governing class to be the most intelligent of the country. I would rather be governed by a few intellectuals than by a stupid majority.
    - 12y ago
  - andrewfong 12y ago
    There's been some research on adding a "deliberative" component to the entire process. http://cdd.stanford.edu/ http://cdd.stanford.edu/. This apparently results in different outcomes than mere voting does. There's obviously the question of whether "different" is in fact "better" and how the deliberative process is structured, but given that debate and discussion appears to be an important part of DemocracyOS, I wonder if there's any way to build upon the existing research here. If we assume that entering a war tends to be more of a rash impulsive, decision than in abstaining from violence, then building DemocracyOS in such a way so as to encourage deliberation could reduce the odds of people voting for war (or, if they do vote for war, assure others that the war is being waged for careful, thought-out reasons). Also, the Lawrence Lessig refrain that "code is law" seems particularly applicable here.
  - orbifold 12y ago
    I think it has been an established fact that the only way to convince people to go to war has been through catastrophic Pearl Harbor type events, massive propaganda and lies. It also helps to have a professional army and no draft, so that only certain sections of the population are really affected. The types of wars and foreign policy decisions the US has been engaged in are more or less inconceivable with an informed and educated electorate that could vote on them.
    - gadders 12y ago
      So you think that the US wouldn't have entered WWII if the US electorate had been more informed?
      - orbifold 12y ago
        I believe that if people are not influenced by war propaganda they generally favor peaceful resolutions of conflict. This is definitely true for the recent Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but probably also true of Vietnam, US support for Saddam Hussein, the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam and so on. If I'm not mistaken public opinion in the US did not support a declaration of war against Germany before Pearl Harbor, obviously in the case of WWII the US really wasn't left with a choice after declarations of war by both Germany and Japan.
    - notahacker 12y ago
      An informed and educated public's decision to vote is also skewed by how much they care about the issue, which gives certain factions a big say in running it. Cuban Americans[1] and fanatical anticommunists care a lot more about not normalising diplomatic relations with Cuba than the general public cares about export contracts, holiday destinations and Cuban human rights not being any worse than many other countries the US has diplomatic relations with. Public sentiments are often swayed in favour of war, and have far less reason to take into account its consequences, because the public isn't punished at the ballot box if "our patriotic duty" turns out to be a farcical mistake. And when it comes to influential minorities, can we even rely on the 59% of Argentines (Yougov survey, 2012) that think military action over "las Malvinas" would be inappropriate to keep the ultra-patriotic 26% that would favour a hypothetical military solution in check? Especially with a substantial majority of that anti-war grouping believing those islands rightfully belong to Argentina anyway. The 1982 war, after all, was a desperately unpopular dictatorship's attempt to appeal to public sentiment. [1]though due to the quirk of Florida being an essential swing state in the electoral college system they've had a disproportional influence in policy under the existing system anyway...
- karmacondon 12y ago
  The Net Party seems like it defeats the purpose of representative democracy. The system was designed to let congress people differ from their electorate on certain matters. If you take the Net Party concept (as I understand it) to it's logical conclusion, isn't that changing the basic form of government from representative to direct democracy? Or in essence saying "Nice try James Madison, but we have something different in mind"? It's great to to give citizens a forum for debate and anything that encourages communication between government and the governed is generally a good thing. Not sure how much I like the idea of making major changes to the basic process of government though, at least here in the United States. I can think of many examples of good things that might not have passed in congress if representatives had to vote the way that citizens using a particular software app wanted them to vote (slavery, income tax, segregation, healthcare). I wish you good luck and it sounds like you're doing good things. Experimentation is good, even if it poses risks.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - vidarh 12y ago
    One of the arguments against representative democracy at all was basically the same: People were supposedly too uninformed, and someone else needed to moderate their wishes. The arguments against expanding the electorate from land owners to all males in many countries were the same. The arguments against allowing women to vote, again largely along similar lines. As was the resistance to steadily lowering the voting ages. As I'm sure you can tell, I don't really buy that this would be such a huge problem. Sure, some decisions will end up different. It's not clear it will be better or worse. But personally I believe that giving people more direct ownership of decisions is valuable in itself. As is improving representation - with current systems (even proportional ones), a lot of people are very poorly represented because finding a party or candidate that fits their views and that has a chance of getting elected is near impossible. There are many mechanisms to counter the issues of an uninformed electorate, such as for example allowing people to delegate votes to representatives (possibly with indirection, so you can e.g. delegate your vote to the candidate from some minor party you agree with, knowing they'll be able to try to parlay a voting block into influence with the parties with seats), or vote "I don't care / I don't know enough about this issue to want to influence it, so I want my representative to count my vote the way they prefer", and many others, while still allowing people to take control and override for things where they do care about deeply about the outcome.
- roel_v 12y ago
  " its candidates are committed to always vote in Congress according to what citizens ask for in DemocracyOS." Jesus that's scary, I hope you guys fail spectacularly and fast (nothing personal).
  - seykron 12y ago
    It already happened, they lost the legal status this year. It was expected, they're only entrepreneurship bullshit, they never would get real engagement from people.
    - mairwilliams 12y ago
      Oh, the guys at the Net Party would love to prove you wrong. If you are in Buenos Aires you are invited to their meeting today at 20 in Belgrano, reach them via twitter DM.
    - santisiri 12y ago
      Let me just say that we got 1.2% of the votes in a 2 million electorate election in 2013. And you (from the Pirate Party in Argentina) never got more than 20 affiliates to join.
- cbd1984 12y ago
  > An oft-quoted story about the "coolness" of the Senate involves George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who was in France during the Constitutional Convention. Upon his return, Jefferson visited Washington and asked why the Convention delegates had created a Senate. "Why did you pour that tea into your saucer?" asked Washington. "To cool it," said Jefferson. "Even so," responded Washington, "we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it." https://www.senate.gov/legislative/common/briefing/Senate_legislative_process.htm https://www.senate.gov/legislative/common/briefing/Senate_le... This concept applies to the government as a whole as it relates to the general population. Everyone is focused on their daily lives. The point of electing a representative government is to have a group of people whose daily lives are focused on the task of running the government, and figuring out where it will go next. People outside of the government only have so much time to think about legislation, even when it's really important.
  - crdoconnor 12y ago
    >The point of electing a representative government is to have a group of people whose daily lives are focused on the task of running the government. People outside of the government only have so much time to think about legislation, even when it's really important. This is post-facto rationalization for why the government operates the way it does. Most governments transitioned from a dictatorship to representative democracy because the masses reached breaking point over a particular issue and demanded greater power, together. Representative democracy exists due to the compromise that was brooked at these points between the ruling classes and the ruled. If anything, it exists as a sop by the ruling classes, who from the very beginning tried to exclude people from voting as they introduced it (only property owners, no blacks, no slaves, no peasants, etc.) Direct democracy is in no way incompatible with the idea that "we don't have enough time to think about legislation", provided you are given the option to delegate your votes to somebody whom you trust who does have time. Any sensible system would do this and let you revoke or move your delegation at any time on any topic. And no, that is not just representative democracy reinvented. I would delegate most of my votes in a direct democracy to my retired parents.
- seykron 12y ago
  Bullshit. Only administrators can upload new bills, and there're a lot of comments here explaining why it is a awful piece of software. And you really don't understand how a representative system works in practice if you keep thinking it is possible to get elected and tell your legislative what to do from a software. It is one of the most naive thoughts I read in my life.
  - piamancini 12y ago
    we are launching the hub now where everyone, even the pirate party in argentina can have their own democracyos and raise their own issues. Stay tuned
- bglusman 12y ago
  You mention spain, is the Spanish Internet Party[1] using DemocracyOS? Are you considering incorporating Liquid Democracy features/ideas into DemocracyOS? They have an open source Rails app aimed at this idea[2] that I was very excited about/helped out on... curious how you see Liquid Democracy's problems/potential [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Party_%28Spainw%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Party_%28Spainw%29 [2]https://github.com/PartidoDeInternet/AgoraOnRails https://github.com/PartidoDeInternet/AgoraOnRails

kriro 12y ago

Are you in contact with the Pirate parties of different countries? Your party sounds like it uses the idea of "liquid democracy" which is discussed quite a bit by the Pirate parties if memory serves right. I think the German one at least discussed some tools to use/build for the entire vote/poll mechanism which I assume is built into your collaboration product. You'll probably end up in some upcoming startup books as an unusual MVP (is it M?). "Found a political party". Good luck, political change is really hard and I do like the concept of more direct wisdom of the crowd like politics. I'm not sure about your product but access to governments and understanding how they work is pretty valuable. Government tools tend to be internally-viral (one community usues it, it spreads). I'm curious if the fact that you are also a party might be dangerous for the product though. Pretty often useful stuff is blocked on principle so for example if your party seems "left", conservative city councils might not use your tool due to that (likewise the other way around). Pretty interesting problem to have.

th0br0 12y ago
They even went ahead and implemented a 'liquid feedback' tool. Which seems quite similar to democracyOS? http://liquidfeedback.org/ http://liquidfeedback.org/
- orbifold 12y ago
  While they were doing that they squandered all their political potential by failing to elect strong, media competent leaders and consequently were dismantled by mass media. Of course the media was relatively keen on doing that anyways, with a few exceptions in the more intellectual news papers.
  - th0br0 12y ago
    I agree, but the parent was referring to this tool I believe.
joeyspn 12y ago
> I think the German one at least discussed some tools to use/build for the entire vote/poll mechanism which I assume is built into your collaboration product I think they built this tool (or considered using) Agora Voting[0] (Django/Python) which as far as I know, has put A LOT of effort into security and fraud-prevention (PKI, Mix-net's, etc), IMO the biggest issue here. It's a soft derived from the Spanish Internet Party, I guess it's the equivalent of the argentian side from which DemocracyOS came into existence, or at least both draw a lot of parallelisms. I wonder if it wouldn't be better for all these DD parties [1] to just unite forces and focus on a single tool... The idea is certainly interesting. [0] https://github.com/agoravoting https://github.com/agoravoting [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_direct_democracy_parties http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_direct_democracy_partie...

slackson 12y ago

This is the sort of place real change is going to come from. Transparent public information, that at the very least will shame politicians into voting in the interests of the people. I understand it's probably not a top priority, but it'd be amazing if prediction markets on the impacts of policies could be included in this tool. It wouldn't even need to be real money, just a way to keep track of people's performance, and weight their impact on later markets accordingly. This would enable true access to the "wisdom of the crowd", and allow citizens to have a proper insight into how candidates and citizens perform in terms of forecasting the impact of policies, and making decisions based on that information.

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
There's already plenty of accurate forecasting available, but it's suppressed and distorted by elite interests. So most voters either have no access to it, or they're told expedient lies by the media. The US has an large organised mass of 'think tanks', 'foundations', and other propaganda fronts which exists solely to lie to the public and directly influence policy makers. Debate is not the answer to this. You can only restore real democracy by making the distortions explicit. That means logging and listing all lobbying efforts, making sure no off-record cash transactions go unreported, and removing anyone who lies to the public for profit from any kind of political influence. DemocracyOS is tinkering around the edges of this. Local democracy is a start, but it won't start to have an effective influence until national policy power is distributed more intelligently.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

rbanffy 12y ago

Wishing you good luck and hoping (rather selfishly) this luck is contagious to Brazil (where I live). A long time ago I worked on Interlegis, which is a tool for legislature workflow automation that's used, as far as I know, widely in Brazil. I see some interesting synergies there for you at a later evolutionary stage.

zby 12y ago
There is http://partidopirata.org/ http://partidopirata.org/ there :)
santisiri 12y ago
Good news: check http://euvoto.org http://euvoto.org it's a start in Sao Paulo!

UserRights 12y ago

From your description I am missing one important idea that you should communicate clearly: you, we and nobody else currently wants to have online voting - what we want to have, are tools that enable transparency and gathering of information, also discussions and preparation of decisions, but the final decision is something you do NOT want to do online. See this talk from 31C3: http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6344_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201412281400_-_security_analysis_of_estonia_s_internet_voting_system_-_j_alex_halderman.html http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6344_-_en_-_... If you still believe that online voting is doable and a great thing, please contact Mr. Halderman and talk to him or read about his work: https://jhalderm.com/ https://jhalderm.com/ Also I recommend to do some research what the german pirate party is using regarding democracy tools - they have a lot of experience not only coding such tools, but also with real life usage. A good start could be https://liqd.net/en/ https://liqd.net/en/ here you can find the adhocracy platform: https://github.com/liqd/adhocracy/ https://github.com/liqd/adhocracy/ which seems to be in a much better developed state than what I see on democracyOS - but maybe there are many things not visible right now to me, so sorry for this criticism. Adhocracy is currently in use by several organizations and they have lots of real life experience, especially with user adaption. An interesting application of adhocracy is https://offenekommune.de/ https://offenekommune.de/ Another interesting tool for organizing (really big) meetings: http://openslides.org/en/ http://openslides.org/en/ and of course the brilliant idea of Bundes-Git, a law-making platform: http://okfnlabs.org/blog/2012/12/13/bundesgit-german-laws-on-github.html http://okfnlabs.org/blog/2012/12/13/bundesgit-german-laws-on... Maybe the best way to get some overview would be to contact the awesome people at https://okfn.org/ https://okfn.org/ - good luck!

UserRights 12y ago

Well, I have to come back to you with a few very basic things that should change immediately if you want to show respect to users and their privacy and would like your business to be taken serious by NGOs and political activists around the globe: * there is NO https://democracyos.org/ https://democracyos.org/ - how deep are your tec guys sleeping??? * please remove the privacy invading tracking links from your website. All of them. Now. These two issues would be most important to gain some credibility in Europe, where most people still do not accept to have their web privacy delivered to x companies without being asked. This is especially true for a site that offers discussion about political issues - a very heavy fauxpas and you should stop doing anything else and prioritize fixing these issues, these are absolutely vital things for a "democracy enhancing platform". * I can not download your manifesto pdf without logging into slideshare. Here again I am forced to pay for your pdf by giving user account information. Why are you letting a third party company take your pdf documents as hostages? I am sure your web servers will not die if you just let people download the pdf from e.g. https://democracyos.org/manifesto.pdf https://democracyos.org/manifesto.pdf These things should change before you open your site to the wider public - too many people will see these as proof for "business guys hijacking democracy software market".

santisiri 12y ago
1) You're right, we got the SSL certificate ready and we'll be deploying it ASAP. 2) Good point, will look into that. 3) Will put the PDF as you suggested. Thanks!

zby 12y ago

Why it is 'Open Source' and not 'Free Software'?

dublinben 12y ago
More palatable to investors, probably. It's harder to turn around and sell out when you've just been offering "open source" rather than truly free software. They rather miss the point though, if they're concerned about democracy and politics.
santisiri 12y ago
It is both. But still the OS in the title plays with the idea of Operating System or Open Society among other interpretations. Read it how you want it.
- zby 12y ago
  I was actually referring to http://democracyos.org/ http://democracyos.org/ - it says "Open Source Join a community that's hacking the future of democracy today. We are 100% open source with an MIT license."

mintplant 12y ago

What's to stop you from fudging the results on DemocracyOS and making whatever choices you want with The Net Party?

maceo 12y ago

As a long-time supporter of your efforts, I have a few suggestions. 1) The name 'The Net Party' isn't going to cut it in the US. Think beyond the fact that you must be connected to participate (e.g. The Popular Party). 2) Don't stay in SV for too long. You can't risk losing touch with the people who are using the software. 3) Your fate will be decided by how easy it is to use your interface. It needs more simplification. The call to action on every page needs to be more clear (e.g. the voting buttons on the /law page ought to be fixed). 4) Look to history for examples. German Pirate Party's LiquidFeedback and Switzerland/Estonia are obvious examples, but there's more. What can you learn from Mondragon in Spain or SEMCO in Brazil? Labor movements that operated on direct democracy? Quaker decision-making?