2019 A New Political System for Great Britain

This document is to provide the frame-work of how direct and representative democracy will work together in the United Kingdom using the govote.org.uk platform.

Direct Democracy is a form of democracy in which people decide on policy initiatives directly and government enacts those policies. This is governance by “the will of the people” for the people. It is the purest form of democracy there has ever been. Greek democracy created at Athens was direct, rather than representative: any adult male citizen over the age of 20 could take part, and it was a duty to do so.

www.govote.org.uk

We have created a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic voting www.govote.org.uk which allows the general public online to create policies, vote and debate on those policies without going through a Parliamentary institution. Anyone of any age can vote, debate and create new policies abolishing the voting age.

Unlike now in the UK’s representative democracy, the age of voting is 18 years old, which is purely arbitrary and not nessesary. If you can read you can vote.

Once the votes have been counted on any given issue or policy the decision is made “by the will of the people” decisions are sent to Parliament to be ratified by the House of Commons.

This system has worked exceedingly well in Sweden where the public have their say on policy creation. Also policy ideas by the government can easily be put to the poeple for their approval. If the voting public don’t like a policy it can be amended easily and reintroduced for futher scrutiny by the public and Parliament later for little cost. We estimate that once the population accepts online voting and direct democracy it will save approximatly £100 million pounds of tax payers money spent on every General Election.

www.govote.org.uk – A New Political System

We have proposed a political system for electronic voting without relying on Members of Parliament or any Parliamentary body to create and enact new policies.

We started with the usual framework of votes made from digital signatures, which provides strong control of ownership. Level 2 security will also be needed in the future, which consists of a photo i.d and a household bill, the public are already used to this. 

Everything is transparent from the person who initiates the policy to everyone who votes for and debates the policy, which is time stamped at every stage. The network is robust in its unstructured simplicity. The people have the ability to work all at once with little coordination.

People can leave and re-join the network at will, accepting the proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone. They vote by using their individual power from any location and on any device, expressing their acceptance of valid policies by voting for them and rejecting invalid policies by voting against them. So any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism. 

In order to take power from the tyranny of a broken UK Parliament, we propose a simple solution. In order to win the General Election we must institue this policy sooner rather than later. The British people will accept the Swedish model of politics and it will restore faith in the political process and bring poeple together after the division of Brexit. The Prime Minister will be seen as a major politcal reformer. 

The solution to the problems we see in the UK and wider world today, with representative or parliamentary democracy is by giving “the people” direct power and responsibility of how they govern their own lives and communities. Sharing power with Parlaiment, which of course changes the relationship with the public and Members of Parlaiment from an “us and them” relationship to a co-operative relationship.

This also limits corruption in public office as the entire process is transparent and easily tracked. Special interest groups and lobbyists can’t operate on the masses as power is spread over the nation and not just centered in the Palace of Westminster. 

In the interim we have already begun working with political parties, national assemblies, local councils and student groups, bridging the gap between direct democracy and representative democracy. The idea has been extremely well recieved and with a 95% appraoval rating for direct democracy, amongst men and women and a near 100% appraoval rating for under eighteens who are now eligble to vote under the new system.

Whilst the site is run by a private company it will fall under the regulation of the Electoral Commission which will give the public added confidence.

In Conclusion

We have many friends across all parties who are keen for direct deomocracy to go ahead, as they recognise how diasterous Parlaiment has been post 2016 referendum. If we can get the public to sign up and start creating policies before the annoucment it will help drive the project forward.