Demoex

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Demoex, an appellation short for democracy experiment, is a local Swedish political party, and represents an experiment with direct democracy in Vallentuna, a Stockholm suburb in Sweden ^[1]. It is an association for direct democracy via Internet that makes it possible for anyone to be active in the local government's debates (but only members have the rights to vote). Since 2003 Demoex has had a commission in the local parliament of Vallentuna, having acquired the first direct democracy mandate ever in Europe.

19-year-old student Parisa Molagholi was elected on 4 November 2002 for the municipal council of Vallentuna with 1,7% of the votes. Her success over the past few years has astonished traditional politicians. Molagholi, who was re-elected in 2006 with 2,9% of the votes, is the representative of Demoex, which has introduced a completely new way to participate in politics. She does not vote in the council according to her own or her party's views, because her vote is instead dependent on the online vote that is held beforehand on the website of the party. Every Vallentuna resident over the age of sixteen can register on the website to vote; anyone, from anywhere in the world, can take part in the debates provided they can write in Swedish.

In a direct democracy representatives are absent, or are limited in power as proxy representatives, as opposed to the more commonly known process of representative democracy. More precisely, Demoex is a political hybrid which uses e-democracy to create an injection of direct democracy into a system of representative democracy, in an attempt to create a 21st century version of the semi-representative democracy adopted by Switzerland since the late 19th century^[2]. Demoex (Democratic Experiment), a local direct democracy (DD) organization, is intended to begin on the communal level and proceed eventually to the national and even international level. ^[3]

A party named Demoex was founded in Sweden on March 6th, 2002, and won a local election in the municipality Vallentuna in that year. Its goal is to develop local democracy through opening politics and decision making to the common citizens. The Demoex system is a computer age version of the Swiss Landsgemeinde ^[4] , one of the oldest and purest forms of direct democracy. It was originally introduced in the Swiss Canton of Uri in 1231, and was structured as an open air gathering, usually in springtime, where votes were expressed by a show of raised hands. This system is still used in the Canton of Glarus and Appenzell Innerrhoden. ^{[5] [6]}

The Demoex vision is to open up the entire political process. All registered voters can indicate their views on a particular issue via polling on the internet; voters do not have to cast a vote on all issues. It then follows that the fewer votes on an issue, the more weight each individual vote carries. To prevent low participation, a user can choose an adviser if she/he does not feel engaged in a certain subject.

Contents 1 Ideology 2 History 2.1 A grass-root initiative 2.2 Rules and advertising 2.3 The election 3 Similar initiatives 4 References 5 See also 6 Bibliography

[edit] Ideology

Although Demoex does not stand for any defined policy, it has a clear ideology: To extend the degree of democracy in society. They claim that technological solutions have surpassed the political. With the help of information technology Demoex wants to create liquid democracy.

What is the extent of democracy?

A simple measure: The number of democratic decisions multiplied with the number of voters. In Vallentuna 20,000 people vote in the local election every fourth year, and 41 representatives in the local government vote another 100 times per year on different issues. The total votes a year, then, amounts to more than 9000. With Demoex in power, the extent of democracy will increase. Suppose that 60 issues a year arise for voting in Demoex, and 1500 users vote on every issue. The total votes per year will multiply to 90,000, about ten times more than previously.^{[neutrality disputed]}

Open society

The ideology is based on the thoughts from Karl Popper and Henri Bergson about open society; the vision of a society built on the principle of public access to official records. Demoex strives for increased access and partaking in the politics.

Statistical distribution

Demoex uses statistical distribution. It means that the purpose of Demoex representatives is to reflect the members' opinions as the online statistics indicate. If Demoex had 5 mandates and 60% of the users' votes for a proposal, then three of the representatives would vote "yes" to that proposal. The rounding follows according to mathematical principles. If it becomes impossible to reflect the members' opinions appropriately in one question, then one representative would give a blank vote. Statistical distribution is used because it gains democracy. In every question, there ought to be only one democratic election. Many sub-elections on the same issue can easily put the majority principle aside.

[edit] History

[edit] A grass-root initiative

It all begun at Vallentuna upper secondary school, on 3 October 2000. The municipality organized a theme day on "IT and democracy," and the question as to why so few young people are politically active emerged. Some students answered that they did not approve to choosing between ideologies. They expressed that their point of views were impossible to place on a political right-left scale. Other students were pessimistic about the aspects of political influence. "Decisions are made from above," they argued. Others answered they had no time to be involved in politics. Others again thought of politics as boring, tiring, and insignificant.

After an internet debate, an oral discussion with local politicians followed. The evaluation showed that students appreciated the speed and the structure offered by the electronic debate system but they felt run over by the traditional oral debate.

From this experience, a handful of students discussed with their philosophy teacher Per Norbäck the possibility of developing an e-democracy. They decided to register a party and candidate for the local government in September 2002 with only one promise: To inject Direct Democracy in the representative system.

In January 2002, they started to work on the project. Soon after, they contacted Mikael Nordfors, a pioneer within e-democracy in Sweden. In the early 1990s, Mikael had founded a party with a similar ideology. Mikael offered Demoex to use the software he had implemented through his company. They made an Internet site, and started to sketch the flow of work.

Demoex tried to find a way to adopt direct democracy into the existing representative system. The Demoex model became a three-step process:

1. Thinning out
2. Debate
3. Cast ballot

• Thinning out consists of removing any irrelevant questions. In the thinning out process, all the public affairs that the local parliament is dealing with are presented. The voters report (on a scale of 1-5) what affairs they want to discuss and vote for. If an affair gets higher average report than 3.00, there will be a debate and a vote.

• In the debates, people argue for or against different political proposals. The debates are the base for the democratic votes. The debate is necessary in order to compare the pros and cons of the proposals. Any participant can contribute arguments to try to convince the other members of the "right" opinion.

• The ballots' deadline is one day before the meeting of the local parliament. The results of the ballots are transformed into mandates according to statistical distribution. To fulfill the process, a Demoex "politician" needs to sign a contract with the promise to represent this distribution in the local parliament.

[edit] Rules and advertising

They also made rules for the participants to follow. The rules are necessary to avoid anarchy. When the rules were set and they had found out an accurate workflow Demoex had to advertise the concept. They distributed leaflets in the local postboxes, made Demoex t-shirts, and borrowed a house van as base for the electoral campaign. A certain interest from the media gave Demoex some attention. Though the advertising campaign was small and cheap, it was enough to win the first DD mandatory in Europe.

[edit] The election

At the election day the founders gathered together where it all started, in Vallentuna upper secondary school, to watch the votes being tallied on a big screen TV. As excitement built, the crowd ran over to the municipal meetinghouse. A local journalist concluded that Demoex needed another 90 ballots, at which point the secretary stepped in with the last counted districts. Demoex had unexpectedly few ballots in the largest district, only 35.

[edit] Similar initiatives

Listapartecipata is an Italian initiative using a similar concept as Demoex. Their slogan is "The control of government in the hands of the citizens (and not only at election time)".

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Delegated voting
• Anarchism
• Demoex info-page in English
• Demoex - think global, act local
• Liquid democracy
• Rome's Lista partecipata
• (Italian)Lista partecipata Home Page

[edit] Bibliography

Barber, Benjamin R., 1984, Strong democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age, University of California Press, Berkley, CA.

Dahl, Robert A., 1985, A preface to Economic Democracy, Polity Press, Oxford.

Grönlund, Åke, 2001, IT, demokrati och medborgarnas deltagande, VINNOVA Rapport VR 2001:26 och TELDOK Rapport 142. TELDOK/VINNOVA, Stockholm.

Habermas, Jürgen, 1996, Between Facts and Norms, Polity Press, Cambridge.

Ilshammar, Lars, 2002, Offentlighetens nya rum – Teknik och politik i Sverige 1969–1999, Universitetsbiblioteket, Örebro

Kvale, Steinar, 1997, Den kvalitativa forskningsintervjun, Studentlitteratur, Lund. Torpe, Lars, 2002, Demokrati på nettet - status og perspektiver for digitalkommunikation i kommunerna, paper till den XIII Nordiske Statskunskabskongres, Aalborg Universitet, 15-16 Augusti 2002. Besökt 2003-03-15

NORBACK, Per. Demoex - think global, act local. Vallentuna, Sweden: The Utopian World Championship 2004.

Olsson, Anders R., 1999, Elektronisk demokrati, Demokratiutredningens skriftserie nr. 16, SOU 1999:12, Fakta info direkt, Stockholm.

Olsson, Anders R., 2001, E-röstning: En lägesrapport, IT-kommissionen, Observatoriet för IT, demokrati och medborgarskap, Observatorierapport 35/2001, IT-kommissionen, Stockholm.

Ottesen, Karin, 2003, IT-stöd för demokratiska processer – med inriktning på innehållen funktionalitet och faktisk användning, Institutionen för informationsteknologi och medier, Mitthögskolan, Sundsvall.