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openpolitics / manifesto

A collaborative political manifesto
http://openpolitics.org.uk/manifesto
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'Open Parliament' as a side project of Open Manifesto #185

Closed PaulJRobinson closed 8 years ago

PaulJRobinson commented 10 years ago

So we have here our Open Manifesto. I'm intrigued by what others have done in the YourVoice Party who are on the South East ballot for the European Parliamentary election tomorrow and have pledged that their MEPs will operate on a Direct Democracy basis for all legislation in the European Parliament - throwing it open to their constituents and casting their votes to match. I wondered whether there is any merit in having an Open Parliament on this site: All legislation (EU or Westminster) that is being debated could be automatically presented as a choice on the site, and everyone gets to vote on that legislation in favour or against it. If we can't get Direct Democracy for real, let's pretend we have it and just let everyone vote on each Bill anyway. Thoughts?

Floppy commented 10 years ago

I like that idea. I wonder if anyone's tried it yet. You mean mirror exactly the votes in Parliament as they happen?

PaulJRobinson commented 10 years ago

Yes. As long as we don't have to manually input each Bill (far too laborious). If there is a way to auto-sync with all the Bills as they are put on Parliament's website (perhaps - I don't know if that's possible?) then we could simply have a thumbs up/down/abstain system as we do for the Manifesto.

PaulJRobinson commented 10 years ago

I was thinking as a side project within the Open Manifesto. But I don't know whether it is actually too distinct.

Floppy commented 10 years ago

Might be something to suggest to the democracy club mailing list. @symroe might have an opinion.

PaulJRobinson commented 10 years ago

But basically it could be presented as "If Direct Democracy were real, this Bill wouldn't pass"

PaulJRobinson commented 10 years ago

We could even experiment with systems of Liquid Democracy and test out what it would be like to give others our vote on certain issues.

philipjohn commented 10 years ago

Oooh I like this idea very much!

mikera commented 10 years ago

I would support a system where: a) You can choose anyone you like to represent you (perhaps segmented by policy area) b) On any issue, you can either vote yourself or let your representative vote for you (the default which would happen in 99% of cases) c) Representatives cannot more votes than a certain threshold (100,000?) but may "spillover" excess votes to other members of their party (this prevents individual "celebrities" from wielding too much power, while still allowing parties to benefit from gaining broad support) d) You representative nomination is reset at a general election. However you can change it during the interim period if you choose. (you could do away with the general election entirely in the future... but I think it is important to retain as a public democratic event?) e) Representatives with the most votes in their constituency in a general election are entitled to become an MP for the next parliament (but this is not obligatory - they can continue to vote on issues outside parliament). All changeovers are decided at general election time (i.e. the MPs will be the representatives with the most votes out of those who elect to put themselves forward as MPs)

PaulJRobinson commented 10 years ago

Some good suggestions @mikera at defining how Liquid Democracy could work as part of an Open Parliament project. Any other ideas as to how such a thing could be taken forward?

mikera commented 10 years ago

There's not really anything to stop someone (us?) building a system that supports open voting in this style and running it as a "shadow parliament".

Technically, the only big issue to solve would be the identity management required to validate citizenship (a topic which the UK gov is royally messing up at the moment, but that is another matter....). Everything else is pretty straightforward.

PaulJRobinson commented 10 years ago

Maybe ignore that issue to start with, and only address it once (if) it becomes clear that a large proportion of contributors are actually from outside UK?

with kind regards, Paul Robinson

about.me/pauljrobinson

On 10 July 2014 12:44, Mike Anderson notifications@github.com wrote:

There's not really anything to stop someone (us?) building a system that supports open voting in this style and running it as a "shadow parliament".

Technically, the only big issue to solve would be the identity management required to validate citizenship (a topic which the UK gov is royally messing up at the moment, but that is another matter....). Everything else is pretty straightforward.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/openpolitics/manifesto/issues/185#issuecomment-48594204 .

mikera commented 10 years ago

I'd actually be more concerned about duplicate / fake accounts - you need to ensure one citizen one vote for the system to be trusted etc. Otherwise it is far too easy to bias the results with a lot of fake accounts nominating a particular representative. The only way I can think of fixing this issue in the long term is with proper identity management tied to citizenship. In the interim I guess using real name accounts (like Facebook) could be OK.

PaulJRobinson commented 10 years ago

​What are people's views on the best identity verification service for comments/voting etc. Gravatar? Disqus? OpenID? I'm familiar with a few others but no expert. ​Are there any which specialise in weeding out fake/duplicate accounts as you suggest?

On 10 July 2014 12:54, Mike Anderson notifications@github.com wrote:

I'd actually be more concerned about duplicate / fake accounts - you need to ensure one citizen one vote for the system to be trusted etc. Otherwise it is far too easy to bias the results with a lot of fake accounts nominating a particular representative. The only way I can think of fixing this issue in the long term is with proper identity management tied to citizenship. In the interim I guess using real name accounts (like Facebook) could be OK.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/openpolitics/manifesto/issues/185#issuecomment-48594937 .

mikera commented 10 years ago

@PaulJRobinson I'm afraid I don't think there is a good answer right now.

The issue is complex - You need to differentiate between basic authentication (this activity is from a technically valid account) from authorization (right to vote, i.e. this person is a UK citizen and has no other duplicate accounts).

Most online identity providers give the former but not the latter. If this is all we care about then GitHub IDs are probably as good as any - note that GitHub works as an OAuth provider (https://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/)

The UK gov should be providing citizen identity management as a common service (but the last I checked it was busy abdicating responsibility on that one....). Fixing that should probably be one of our policies, BTW.

Floppy commented 8 years ago

Going to close this discussion here, as it's not for this project specifically, but we should remember it. I think there might be projects doing exactly this, I'll have a look around.