Free Speech for Free People in a Free System by Free Votes on Free Topics
Somthing like that and some more important freedoms are considered by the "Democratic Experience" (DemExp).
It's another site dedicated to direct democracy systems, just like nornia or dotmocracy. The DemExp uses Condorcet’s voting method, in which everyone not only has one vote for one topic, but has to order the possible answers in order of preference (The Debian project uses Condorcet, too). Also everybody may call votes and propose answers.
DemExp shares many common building blocks with other direct democracy systems, like giving away one's vote on a special topic to a trusted person, etc.
The people with DemExp start to build a software for this kind of democracy and want to build up a live experiment. If they get enough people to participate, then this should become very exciting! :)
Some criticism:
- They have no RSS-Feed
- How the HECK am I supposed to know, when they start rocking? When they need help? When they have something workable? Why do they assume, that I will check back to their site every month/week/day?? This reminds me of lots of the OpenMoney guys. Sorry for not linking to them, I like that project, but I really don't know where to link to.. They use at least three different web sites, proprietary communication tools, have no communication to the outside and I never know, which damned proprietary channel they use or on what webpage I find current information - see what I mean??
- They specifically talk about a system, that 'concentrates' the votes!
- While this is much easier to build than a system that is decentralized - it scares me a bit, that they use concepts like 'decentralization of decision' and 'centralization of data' in one paragraph. Ok, just a minor glitch, I admit. And that the first prototype will be centralized, is also understandable. But always keep in mind, that this is 'A Bad Thing'TM
BTW: They mention a free software that allows for direct democracy voting and even a company that uses it for stuff, that concerns every employer:
- Glasnost voting system
- http://www.easter-eggs.org/ - is this the company?!?
They mention on their page, that a company named "Easter Eggs" uses it - but they don't link to that company anywhere.... only the company, that creates the Glasnost-software... see what I mean??