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Parlementslid
Geregistreerd: 24 juli 2005
Berichten: 1.625
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Het Demoex (democratie experiment) initiatief in ZWEDEN
Sorry voor het Engels maar ik denk dat Zweeds nog moeilijker zou zijn 
Als er belangstelling is dan zal uit de discussie wel blijken als er vertaalproblemen zijn.
Een kort uittreksel om de essentie weer te geven: Er wordt dus eerst on line gestemd over een onderwerp en de "verkozene" verwoordt deze uitslag in de gemeenteraad (of waar ze ook verkozen mag zijn), en dus niet het partijstandpunt.
Citaat:
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She does not vote in the council according to her own or her party's views, because her vote is instead dependent on the online vote that is held beforehand on the website of the party. Every Vallentuna resident over the age of sixteen can register on the website to vote; anyone, from anywhere in the world, can take part in the debates provided they can write in Swedish.
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Citaat:
History
Demoex started off as a grass-root initiative. It all begun at Vallentuna upper secondary school October 3rd 2000. Our municipality organized a theme day on “IT and democracy” and the question why so few young persons are politically active emerged.
http://demoex.net/en/ is hun website en meer practische info vinden we ook op (wat bijgeknipt)
http://www.soc.nu/utopian/competitor...inal.asp?ID=36
In January 2002 we started to work on the project. Soon after we contacted Mikael Nordfors, a pioneer within e-democracy in Sweden. Already in the early 1990's Mikael founded a party with a similar ideology. Mikael offered us to use the software he had implemented through his company Vivarto. We made an Internet site, and started to sketch on the workflow. We tried to find a way to adopt direct democracy into the existing representative system. The model became a theestep-solution. 1. Thinning out - 2. debate - 3. cast ballot. Thinning out means that we're taking the irrelevant questions away. In the thinning out progress all the public affairs that the local parliament are dealing with is presented. The members report (scale 1-5) what affairs they want to discuss and vote for. If an affair gets higher average report than 3.00, there will be a debate and a vote. In the debates people argue for or against different political proposals. The debates are the base for the democratically votes. The debate is necessary in order to compare the pros and cons of the proposals. Any participant can contribute arguments to try and convince the other members of the "right" opinion. The ballots' deadline is one day before the meeting of the local parliament. The result of the ballots are transformed into mandates according to statistical disribution. To fulfil the process Demoex "politician" needed to sign a contract with the promise to represent this distribution in the local parliament.
We would like to make it possible for common people to participate without wasting a lot of time, without any particular precondition. Soon we understood that the one of the biggest challenges was to reform the political language. The summons and protocols in Vallentuna were far from easy to understand. We couldn´t change this verbal culture, so we decided to "translate" the most important parts of the formal documents into normal language. We needed to create a new lingustic culture - something in between chat and politics. Such a task calls for rules and implementation. In order to make people adopt our linguistic code we published a "school of debate" on our site. We told that "if you want to convince you have to write so that people can understand" and gave some advices, listed below:
Avoid repeating argument
Before you write you ought to read what others have written. If someone already has written what you were going to say - fine! Then appriciate that argument instead of writing the same.
Begin with the most important
Write the most important you want to say first, then the next most important. If you write over 50 words, divide the text in paragraphs. It will be easier to read in that way. Only treat one thought per paragraph and always stick to the subject so that the main thread is clear. It is often suitable to repeat the most important in the end, but write with different words to make it clearer.
Be clear
The more clearer you put your arguments, the easier it will be for others to understand what you want to say. Write what you want to say and avoid unnecessary negations. Negations are words that turns the meaning of a sentence - not, no, never. An example of a sentence with several negations is "It is never wrong to avoid not to make it difficult". It is better to write: Don't make it difficult. Ironi, sarcasm and jokes are olso difficult in written text. If you're trying to be resourceful you will easily be misunderstood.
Use simple words
Avoid difficault words, choose easier formulations that means the same thing. Avoid abbreviations if possible. If not possible: be careful to explain them at there first occurrence.
If you have to use technical language, please explain them. Do anticipate that the readers are intelligent, but not that they have all the expert knowledge.
Keep it short
Have the reader in mind. Try to come to the point without writing an essay. If you want to say more than one thing, write many short contributions instead.
It is more difficult to read a text on a screen than in a paper. Long contributions are harder to read than vigorous. Our recommendation is between 20-80 words each contribution..
Let the headline be accurate
The headline must be tempting if you want people to read your contribution. It aims to catch the interest and tell about the contribution. The headline mustn´t be unintelligible or too long. A good headline is an accurate sum up - enought information to be interesting but without exposing every shade of meaning.
Rules may be boring, but they are neccessary presuppositions. Participating democracy cannot be anarcistic. The rules gains freedom. We made another list with rules for debate:
Avoid
contributions that are against swedish law
lies or calumny
threats or harassements
cursing or obscene words
nonsense contributions, or contributions that digress from the subject.
assault of a person or libel contributions
commercial messages
exhortation to crime
unauthorizied publication of copywright material.
links to sites that contents the above
When the rules were set and we had found out an accurate workflow we had to advertise the concept. In the summer of -02 we spread a leaflet in the local postboxes. We made Demoex t-shirts and borrowed a housevan as base for our electoral campaign. A certain interest from the media gave us some attention. Though the advertising campaign was small and cheap, it was enough to win the first DD mandatory in Europe.
At the election day we gathered together were it all started - in Vallentuna upper secondary scool. We followed the summing up on a bigscreen TV. After two counted districts everyone was cool, but when 10 of the 12 districts were counted we where borderline personalites, so was Demoex. The excitement was unreal and we just couldn´t stay calm. We run over to the summing up meeting in the house of Muncipality. A local journalist concluded that we needed another 90 ballots. Right then the secretary steps in with the last counted districts. We had unexpected few ballots in the largest district, only 35. Everything is quiet for a second. The journalist speaks toneless: "Then you didn´t made it." Ten seconds later my cell phone rings. It is DN, the biggest national newspaper in Sweden. They want a quick comment, they have seen on the Internet that we have a mandatory. I don´t know what I replied, I almost starts boiling from inside when I recall the feeling. We ran out on the square, wild screaming. On the front page of the local newspaper the next week everyone looks happy but me. I just look like I´m far away.
In November 4th 2002 one of my former students, Parisa Molagholi 19 years old,, made her entrance in the local government as Demoex representative. At the first meeting she argued against the proposal to raise the politician fee so effectively that she was met by a spontaneus applause. The proposal went back and Demoex magnificiant debute in politics was made. The concept was working well and Demoex had a lot of new members. Just one thing was worrying: The democracy forum wasn´t stable enought. When the activity was high, the server often went down. We realized the problem and we didn´t want to be critizised this early, so we didn´t secure many new members. The company Vivarto had some economical problems, and so there was no further program development. One year after we started we had to make a very very hard decision. The company Membro was asking if we would like to try their Democracy forum Ed for free. We did so, and after the evaluation we made a votation on which one of the systems we should use for the next year. The result was that we left the cooperation with Vivarto. Demoex are in a great debt of gratitude to Vivarto´s owner Mikael Nordfors. Thanks to him the idea became possible. Membros system is more stable and easy to work with, but the biggest advantage is the continous development. The company adopts our points of view in order to fit our purposes.
The number of users in Demoex did stagnate before we had the new Membro system, so we needed to start a new press campaign. But first we wanted to isolate our concept. Our mandatory makes us in a favourable situation. We have some financial support and no political power. Demoex is short for "Democratic Experiment" and now it´s time to make the real experiment. How far can we go with DD (directdemocracy)? We decided to turn more radical, so we changed the statues for Demoex. Inspired by the DD manifesto, written by Akiva Orr, we want every citizen to be able to vote at every point of issue. In order to make it possible, we abolished the member fee for local citizens. Everyone in the muncipality that are more than 16 year old have the right to vote in the Local Parliament´s issues via Demoex. From now on Demoex is a kind of civil rights movement.
In order to pay attention to this Demoex arranges a demonstration in Vallentuna the 1:th of May. The subject of the demostration is increased right to vote. The last demonstration in Sweden for increased right to vote was held before women had this right, about ninety years ago. Now it´s time again! Our present right to vote is limited to one day - the election day - every fourth year. We want want every citizen to be able to vote at every point of issue.
I can´t tell how this experiment ends up, because we are right here at the time! The demonstration is tomorrow. Maybe the press will report from the demonstration, maybe I can read about this in the newspapers tomorrow. It thrills. I´m living in Utopia. The future of Demoex is unwritten. Think global, act local. I don´t need to say anymore. Schopenhauer looks concerned. Nietzsche is quiet.
Per Norbäck
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www.democratie.nu
Paul
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Laatst gewijzigd door Paul Nollen : 7 november 2008 om 19:03.
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7 november 2008, 18:53
