

Direct Democracy: Iceland's crowdsourced constitution submitted for approval - nextparadigms
http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/31/icelands-crowdsourced-constitution-submitted-for-approval-nyan/

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jgilliam
The Constitution is not about direct democracy at all, it's setting up a
parliamentary republic. And the drafting of it involved a lot of online
feedback and participation, but was ultimately written by a committee of 25
people.

Some noteworthy aspects: It guarantees universal health care, the President is
elected with preferential voting (where voters rank their choices 1,2,3,etc.),
and to amend the Constitution, Parliament must pass a bill and then a vote is
held within 1-3 months. It's also possible for Parliament to unilaterally
amend the Constitution, but only with a 5/6th super super majority.

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nextparadigms
I think this is a good step towards Governments and Parliaments that are more
representative for their people. Direct Democracy sounds like something
idealistic that would never work in practice, but that's only because people
think of it to the extreme - as in literally the whole population deciding
what laws need to pass and so on. And I don't think you should look at it like
that, and instead using it as a scale - how _direct_ do you want it to be
exactly? Where are the specific situations where people can directly influence
legislation and governance?

The current representatives in all countries seem to have gotten out of hand,
and they mostly do what they want, especially if it's an issue that threatens
their power.

To most young people voting seems pointless because they know it's a very weak
form of feedback to vote a "party", and it's a feedback that happens too
rarely. This is why they couldn't care less anymore about who get to be the
next country leaders.

If they could engage a lot more with the representatives, and feel like they
helped shape a certain legislation, I think they will become a lot more
enthusiastic about it. They'd also like politicians to be a lot more
accountable, because too many times they get away with voting for legislation
that isn't for the benefit of the population at all, neither in the short
term, nor in the long term. Warren Buffet seems to agree with politicians
becoming more accountable, too.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNEp7q30JCw>

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lukesandberg
The main question to ask would be, is this system scalable to larger more
diverse populations. Iceland is tiny (approx. 250K i think).

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Joakal
In Australia for Federal election, there's a 'ticket' for electing senators.
In NSW, there's over 150 candidates. The way to vote is in two ways; 1) Must
accurately vote for each candidate in a numeric incremental fashion. One
mistake = invalid vote. 2) Or pick just one party. There's 15 parties.

With 2) If you pick a party, you voted for that particular party preferences
where the party pre-filled the preferences for all 150 candidates for you.

That is very scalable until there's 150 parties. Or maybe 1500 parties.

I believe eventually that the government will be forced to provide a 'policy
platform' department where the voter gets to 'vote' where their concerns are,
eg do you support granting prisoners right to vote (Yes/No or
Strongly/Disagree) and the output is the party most closely aligned.

Then the onus is on the parties to submit all the relevant positions to the
policy platform department. I tried to create this platform [0] and closed it,
code is available for others. I think I'll add it to Github soon actually!

I don't believe the platform will happen for a long time as parties complain
that they can't fulfill all their promises while the voters believe that the
parties will fulfill their promises. Leading some to rage when politicians
call them 'non-core promises' [1].

Also, some parties treat election policies as trade secrets.. seriously. They
won't reveal them until election time because gasp, the current government
might implement them immediately.

[0] <http://joakal.com/topic/shockseat/>

[1] [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=non-
core%20pr...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=non-
core%20promise&defid=1485810)

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PandaMilk
A little bit of backstory in case anyone's interested. This endeavor started
out as a constitutional congress, members having been elected in a low turnout
election in late 2010. For some legal-technical reason the election was
illegal and therefore the powers that be decided to appoint the congress
elects to a committee instead. All this was done as an appeasement response to
public anger following the economic downturn in 2008. A clever, if expensive,
political ploy as it made the government look like it was making an effort.
The reality is that it makes no difference whether or not this committee makes
any changes, anything they decide will be non-binding and advisory only. Most
people in this country think the whole thing is monumentally pointless, being
as there aren't many contentious issues in the current constitution to begin
with.

~~~
AnthonBerg
Icelander here.

 _This endeavor started out as a constitutional congress, members having been
elected in a low turnout election in late 2010. For some legal-technical
reason the election was illegal and therefore the powers that be decided to
appoint the congress elects to a committee instead._

True.

The reason the election was disqualified was debatable at best, but it was due
to a lawsuit by some IMO rather slimy true-blood partisans of the highly
corrupt opposition party _Sjálfstæðisflokkur_ ; The lawsuit involved
technicalities in the voting process. The courts are appointed by congress
representatives - very many from _Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn_. The judiciary
appointment process here is IMO ethically problematic, to say the least.

 _All this was done as an appeasement response to public anger following the
economic downturn in 2008._

Interpretation, not fact.

 _A clever, if expensive, political ploy as it made the government look like
it was making an effort._

Interpretation, not fact.

 _The reality is that it makes no difference whether or not this committee
makes any changes, anything they decide will be non-binding and advisory
only._

Not strictly false, but is very difficult for the current govermnent to
totally ignore the results of the committee; The election may have been low-
turnout for example, but the committee process has been high-profile.

 _Most people in this country think the whole thing is monumentally
pointless,_

Interpretation, not fact; IMO even a rather biased interpretation.

 _... being as there aren't many contentious issues in the current
constitution to begin with._

And this is where you go to far IMO. You cannot state that as fact. There
exist in fact long-standing and very public arguments here about: The
separation of powers, judiciary appointment, a highly disputed clause about
the president's power to impede legislation (it's very fuzzy and highly open
to interpretation - this MUST be clarified), human rights, media, etc. etc.
etc.

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aw3c2
AFP link if you want to avoid the stupid at engadget ;)
[http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jbxT7zuFK...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jbxT7zuFKWBTWF767LVU0xZMWRrw?docId=CNG.6b44e7e4e2bbd63a32abdf8eea663c41.01)

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ristretto
Another pompous title. It was not crowdsourced, but they used social media for
online discussion with the committee that drafted it. May not be practical for
countries with >300K souls, though.

