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Demoex, an appellation short for democracy experiment, is a local Sweden political party and an experiment with direct democracy in Vallentuna, a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden. - DirectDemocracy online. Stockholm Challenge Award 2007-2008 It uses the Internet to make it possible for any member to participate in the local government. Demoex has a representative in the municipal council, who votes in the council according to a poll that is held beforehand on the website of the party. This is unlike traditional representatives, who vote according to their own views or their party's views. Every Vallentuna resident older than 16 years can register on the website to vote; anyone in the world can take part in the debates, if they can write in Swedish language. Voters do not have to vote on all issues; the fewer votes on an issue, the more weight each vote carries. To boost participation, the party allows users to choose someone to advise them on a particular topic.
Demoex was founded on March 6, 2002, and won a local election in the municipality Vallentuna that year. 2002-2010 the Demoex representative was 19-year-old student Parisa Molagholi, elected on 4 November 2002 with 1.7% of the votes. She began serving as representative in 2003, and was re-elected in 2006 with 2.9% of the votes. Her success has astonished traditional politicians. The party's representative, Per Norbäck, was elected in 2010 with 1.76% of the vote. Demoex intends to become a national party and eventually an international party on the same principles.
The Demoex system is a Politics hybrid which uses e-democracy to inject direct democracy into a system of representative democracy. This creates a semi-representative democracy, similar to one that has been used in Switzerland since the late 19th century. In pure direct democracy, there are no representatives, or there are only proxy representatives with limited power. By contrast, in a representative democracy, the elected representatives have all the power to make political decisions. The Swiss Landsgemeinde is one of the oldest and purest forms of direct democracy. It was originally introduced in the Swiss Canton of Uri in 1231, and was structured as an open-air gathering, usually in springtime, where votes were expressed by a show of raised hands. This system is still used in the Canton of Glarus and Appenzell Innerrhoden. democracy springs eternal. Glarus, Switzerland: SwissInfo.com May 15, 2006 12:56PM réduit radicalement le nombre de ses communes. Glarus, Switzerland: SwissInfo.ch, May 7 2006 - 16:58
After an internet debate, an oral discussion with local politicians followed. The evaluation showed that students appreciated the speed and the structure offered by the electronic debate system but they felt run over by the traditional oral debate.
From this experience, a handful of students discussed with their philosophy teacher Per Norbäck the possibility of developing an e-democracy. They decided to register a party and candidate for the local government in September 2002 with only one promise: to inject direct democracy in the representative system.
In January 2002, they started to work on the project. Soon after, they contacted Mikael Nordfors, a pioneer within e-democracy in Sweden. In the early 1990s, Mikael had founded a party with a similar ideology. Mikael offered Demoex to use the software he had implemented through his company.
They made an Internet site, and started to sketch the work flow. Demoex tried to find a way to adopt direct democracy into the existing representative system. The Demoex model became a three-step process:
Thinning out consists of removing any irrelevant questions. In the thinning out process, all the public affairs that the local parliament is dealing with are presented. The voters report (on a scale of 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 democratic votes. The debate is necessary in order to compare the pros and cons of the proposals. Any participant can contribute arguments to try to convince the other members of the "right" opinion.
The deadline for casting ballots is one day before the meeting of the local parliament. The results of the ballots are transformed into mandates according to statistical distribution. To fulfill the process, a Demoex representative needs to sign a contract with the promise to represent this distribution in the local parliament.
Lista Partecipata is an Italian initiative using a similar concept as Demoex. Their slogan is "The control of government in the hands of the citizens (and not only at election time)". Lista partecipata Home Page Rome's Lista partecipata Lista Partecipata article from the Telematics Freedom Foundation.
Senator On-Line is an Australian political party which proposes to have no platform but rather to act based on online polls.
Net Party in Argentina uses the software DemocracyOS for an online form of direct democracy, and its current goal is to get elected a congressperson who will vote according to what the citizenry decides online.
Other similar initiatives:
Since 2011, similar initiatives are working together as E2D.
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