Open Source Program To Give Voters More Active Role In Government

An anonymous reader writes "Argentinian political activists are developing an open source program that will allow voters to direct their representatives on how to vote on certain issues by giving voters a platform to debate and vote on issues themselves. Started as an accompaniment to and a fundamental feature of a new political party in Argentina, Democracy OS is not designed to be anonymous (i.e., no secret ballots, no anonymous comments). 'Fortunately, the software isn't yet being used to gather real votes, just to gather public feedback.' Critics see this program as yet another iteration of Germany's Pirate Party, which could not engage enough voters in its own open source program, Liquid Feedback, to gain any meaningful policy direction from their constituents. German newspaper Der Spiegel once called the movement 'a grassroots democracy where no one is showing up to participate.'"

Comments

Change human nature first and good luck with that

[clarkkent09]

All such schemes have the same flaw which is that only a small minority of people have the interest, time and intelligence to understand the issues to a deep enough level to actually make their vote matter more than a random toss of a dart. Hence, that minority controls the process and pretty soon begins to exclude anybody who doesn't fit in with their groupthink, defeating the whole purpose.