Loading

Building democracy that matters

Why Bother with a site for Democracy?

Britain did not become a representative democracy until the Representation of the People Acts of 1918 and 1928 gave the vote to all men and women over the age of 21. 18 year-olds can now vote but little else has changed since then.

Every few years citizens have a single opportunity to vote for one person. The person who receives the most votes is elected as an MP and is meant to represent the views of every constituent on every issue that comes before Parliament. This is obviously impossible to do:

  • The MP cannot know constituents' preferences about most things
  • Constituents have conflicting opinions
  • MPs are usually obliged to vote in line with their Party's mandates
  • Voters vote according to political Parties' manifestos. These are not only vague but frequently abandoned once the Party is in power
  • Since politicians are not expert in all the areas they pass legislation on they take advice from bureaucrats who have not been elected and who have their own interests to advance
  • Lobby groups, special interest groups, cronyism, inter-party fighting and the personal interests of politicians create further distance from the representative ideal
  • Young people have little or no say at all

Direct Democracy

100 years on from the Representation of the People Acts only a minority of us have any meaningful representation. Yet technology has made it possible for everyone with a computer and internet access to express their opinions about anything.

Nearly 3 million people use Facebook each day. Using simple structures to organise people's opinions it would possible to harness this level of engagement to make democratic decisions directly, without the need for representation and without political Parties.

Using available technology, direct democracy could rapidly become the central pillar of the democratic state. Citizens could regularly have their say about a wide range of issues which could then be enacted by a different form of government, charged with administering rather than making democratic choices.

This website is an example of what is possible.

Everybody is entitled to participate

No-one should be excluded from deciding how best to live together in a civilised society.

By using this site we can show how it can be done. It is a powerful example of Twenty-first Century democracy.