
Icelanders vote to base new constitution on crowdsourced draft - mtgx
http://gigaom.com/europe/icelanders-approve-their-crowdsourced-constitution/
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AnthonBerg
Icelander here. The headline is completely false: "Icelanders approve their
crowdsourced Constitution."

We Icelanders voted in a NON-BINDING referendum, where the first question was
"yes / no, I want / do not want the proposals from the public constitutional
congress to be used as the basis for a parliamentary referendum for a new
constitution". It is then explicitly stated on the voting card that the
proposals may change in the process of being worked into a parliamentary
referendum for a new constitution - which then again must be approved not once
but twice by two separately elected parliaments (i.e. voted through in
parliament, parliament dissolved, voted in again, and the referendum approved
again there).

Headline is FALSE and misleading.

— edit: that said, I support the establishment of a new constitution, and I
like a lot of things in the proposals. There are also some things I do not
like. The proposals need work to become fit to be a constitution, that's for
sure.

~~~
drivingmenuts
Have the results been published where non-Icelanders can read them?

This sounds like a fantastic idea, but it would be problematic in the US, I
think. My opinion is that we're too large a population and too
disengaged/disenfranchised for it to be truly representative. Perhaps a bit
too polarized, as well.

~~~
saraid216
Yeah, it wouldn't work in the US. I'd like to see it thrown out as a
hypothetical to see how people would react, though.

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uvdiv
Text of proposed constitution, in English:

[http://stjornlagarad.is/other_files/stjornlagarad/Frumvarp-e...](http://stjornlagarad.is/other_files/stjornlagarad/Frumvarp-
enska.pdf)

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lifeisstillgood
I cannot tell if a crowd-sourced consititution would be more or less likely to
invent a phrase like _"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"_

~~~
SkyMarshal
That's probably more a function of era than method. I doubt any constitution
these days would be highly likely to construct such a turn of phrase.

~~~
_delirium
And even there it was an odd confluence of particular circumstances. Two
factors: 1) at that time, "life, liberty, and property" had become a catch
phrase of sorts; but 2) Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were both skeptical
of property being a natural right (vs. a socially created right justified by
other, more fundamental rights), so may have pushed for an alternate
formulation (this is poorly documented and disputed).

~~~
trhtrsh
"life, liberty, and pursuit of property", that is.

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jbattle
In the US at least, not nearly enough is known about Iceland's history with
respect to democracy, rule of law, and arbitration. We hear about the Magna
Carta but not the Althing

~~~
rprasad
The Magna Carta was a founding document for principles of legal rights and
property rights in common-law-based legal systems such as the U.S. Principles
in the Magna Carta are still applied today in different forms. This is why
American schoolchildren learn about the Magna Carta.

However, the U.S. legislative body is not based on a parliamentary system such
as existed in Britain or the Iceland. While the Althing is probably
historically relevant to countries which adopted the parliamentary system, it
is of little to no relevance to a Congressional-based government.

~~~
btilly
FYI the idea of a parliament traces back to the royal council that first
appeared in the Magna Charta. So that has nothing to do with the Althing.

However the Althing is a natural outgrowth of the Germanic tradition of a þing
(usually transliterated as "thing"), which appeared in England as the
wapentake. The legal traditions that were established there survived as common
practice, forming the roots behind common law. Thus the Althing is closely
related to the legal tradition from which we derive contracts, torts, and so
on.

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nicholas73
Remember the Jeff Bezos article that was up last week - those who are right
most of the time are those who constantly update.

Having an open and living document this way is the only way to constantly
update. Unlike our system where no politician is going to admit wrong.

~~~
saraid216
You do realize that the US Constitution can and is updated, right? As is "our
system" by which you presumably mean the US Code.

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BrianEatWorld
This seems to fly in the face of the whole "Veil of Ignorance" theory for
creating a just constitution. It will be interesting to see if this document
ends up with more or less self-serving language than constitutions written by
smaller parties.

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evanlivingston
Stories about Iceland crowdsourcing it's legislation keep arising, but I have
yet to see any authors talk about Iceland's incredibly small population of
300,000.

~~~
csmatt
Just as startups have a natural advantage to make big change due to the
agility of a small group, big change will most likely come from countries with
smaller populations.

~~~
daniel-cussen
Like Ghana, Costa Rica, Singapore, Dubai, Ireland, Chile, and Finland.

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UntitledNo4
"technology is being used to give more normal people a say"

God bless technology. Without it we would run the risk of letting less and
average normal people have a say.

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mcpie
It would be an interesting experiment to have a random selection of citizens
formulate a hypothetical new constitution.

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gnosis
This is pretty scary.

The potential for abuse and fraud in a computerized referendum like this is
tremendous.

Even if you trust Facebook and Twitter (which you shouldn't), they are open to
being hacked and sockpuppeted.

Of course none of these risks are even mentioned in the story, as the
uncritical, thoughtless media just eat it up.

~~~
sp332
The referendum wasn't computerized, only the drafting and feedback process.

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gnosis
These are just as subject to abuse.

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arnarbi
Well, it was like this: 25 people were elected to serve on a council to draft
a new constitution. As a part of their process, they set up a website where
people could post comments and have discussion on certain articles, or the
constitution in general.

There was no form of voting. Just discussion, serving as input for the
deliberations of the council.

It's a nation of 300k people, of which only a fraction of course involves
themselves with political discourse. I don't think there was any room for
gaming or abusing the system here.

