The intention of Crowdocracy is to allow people to vote on life-affecting group decisions, with sights on the largest decisions like government elections and tax spending.
One thing that seems broken about our current democratic systems it that they're slow, not subject to evolution, and most importantly don't feel representative of the people's will. Why can't we allow one-person, one-vote to be a reality through digital technology?
We propose a fully open, transparent, directly-empowering crowdvoting platform. While our current thoughts are that the voting system should default to ranked voting across the board, we want Crowdocracy to serve as a platform for testing various voting models, which the crowd can choose before even beginning voting, to ultimately test by data and feedback which model of voting feels like it most empowers the most people.
Our current thoughts are to make this project open-source, so there's no black box, and that everything should be traceable and transparent, except that who votes for what could be anonymized with strict accountability to ensure that there's still one person, one vote.
To this end, on principle we are exploring using a blockchain (via Ethereum) and open-source. We are open to ideas and would ultimately like to build an MVP that can be used to make decisions throughout the development pipeline.
Beyond allowing each citizen to be directly involved in the democratic process, we would like the money trail to go hand-in-hand by allowing crowdfunding and allocation of these resources to be tied directly into the platform.
One proposed model is that each month, between (min) $1 and (max) $27 is collected via crowdfunding (Stripe, Crowdtilt?) from all participants, and this allows that person a single vote (no matter the amount contributed) during that month's elections. Then, anyone can volunteer for office, or propose a bill, or submit a concern, and by some deadline, all options are locked for that voting cycle. Some determination should be made in advance (subject to crowdvoted revision) about how to fairly distribute all money collected to fund the various bills or salaries, and otherwise to be saved or spent on other over-budget matters. Then the crowd will use ranked voting (currently, subject to change via crowdvote) to determine what the necessary votes are for each bill or election, and what voting model to use for those various votes. Once the voting models are determined by the crowd, the matters move to a crowd discussion (à la Stack Overflow / Reddit), then to vote, and then to discussion and vote for each submodule of a vote (such as, now that we see which proposal has won and how much money has been allocated, a multi-round discussion and vote should be held to allocate funds and determine officers).
The platform is intended to be meta in the sense that the voting models employed by the site can be changed and chosen via crowdvote, they must adhere (to be determined by crowd discussion and vote) to a constitution of principles around greatest good, harmony, equal and equitable representation (all subject to change over time via crowd discussion and crowdvote).
A feedback mechanism should be in place as well, to help the platform and crowd determine over time which voting models seemed to most effectively and efficiently represent the crowd's volition, to determine a sense of fairness and equal and equitable representation. All participants (citizens) should be allowed one vote, and thus a legitimate voice, in all matters on the site, as much or little as they wish.
An AI could even be employed to vote on one's behalf by learning how one votes over time, and seek confirmation for upcoming votes in case one does not want to directly vote.
Looking forward to clarifying, refining, collaborating, and realizing a crowdocracy with anyone interested in contributing and participating!