Liquid democracy

The origin of the delegative form and the concept of liquid democracy remains unclear.

In 1884, Charles Dodgson (better known under his pseudonym Lewis Carroll) was an early proponent of this kind of system. His 1884 pamphlet The Principles of Parliamentary Representation expounded a system based on multi-member districts, each voter casting only a single vote, quotas as minimum requirements to take seats, and votes transferred and "clubbed together" by candidates to fill remaining seats, in a process now called Liquid Democracy.[6] Bryan Ford in his paper "Delegative Democracy" states this could be seen as the first step towards liquid democracy.[7]

Based on the work of Jabbusch[8] and James Green-Armytage, liquid democracy can be traced back to the work of Oregon reformer William S. U'Ren. In 1912, he lobbied for interactive representation (the Proxy Plan of Representation),[9] where the elected politicians' influence would be weighted with regard to the number of votes each had received.[10]

A few decades later, around 1967, Gordon Tullock suggested that voters could choose their representatives or vote themselves in parliament "by wire", while debates were broadcast on television. James C. Miller favored the idea that everybody should have the possibility to vote on any question themselves or to appoint a representative who could transmit their inquiries. Soon after Miller argued in favor of liquid democracy, in 1970 Martin Shubik called the process an "instant referendum". Nonetheless, Shubik was concerned about the speed of decision-making and how it might influence the time available for public debates.[11]

In the early 2000s, an unknown web user known as “sayke” argued that "liquid democracy can be thought of as a function that takes a question as an argument, and returns a list of answers sorted by group preference […] as a voting system that migrates along the line between direct and representative democracy." This idea led to the concept of a decentralized information system allowing civic participation in political decision-making, which would push parliaments to become obsolete.[12]

The prototypical liquid democracy has been summarized by Bryan Ford in his paper, "Delegative Democracy", containing the following principles:[13]

1. Choice of role: Members of the democracy can either passively act as an individual or actively act as a delegate. This is different from representative democracies, which only use specific representatives. This way, delegates can be selective about their participation in different areas of policy.
2. Low barrier to participation: Delegates do not have much difficulty becoming delegates. Most notably, they do not have to win competitive elections that involve costly political campaigns.
3. Delegated authority: Delegates act in processes on behalf of themselves and of individuals who choose them as their delegate. Their power to make decisions varies based on their varying support.
4. Privacy of the individual: All votes by individuals are kept secret to prevent any form of coercion by delegates or other individuals.
5. Accountability of the delegates: In contrast to the privacy of the individuals, the formal decisions of delegates are typically made public to their voters and the broader community to hold them accountable for their actions.
6. Specialization by re-delegation: Delegates are able to have both general authorities delegated to them from individual voters and specialized authority re-delegated to them from other delegates to work on their behalf.

Variations on this general model also exist, and this outline is only mentioned here for orientation within a general model. For example, in the "Joy of Revolution,"[14] delegates are left open to being specialized at the time of each individual's delegation of authority. Additionally, general principles of fluidity can often be applied to the concept such that individuals can revise their "vote" at any time by modifying their registered delegation (sometimes called "proxy") with the governing organization.[15] (see also Single Transferable Vote.)

The paradigm of liquid democracy is found to be different to that of proxy voting, since liquid democracy allows for delegates to delegate all their votes (including the ones they were delegated) to another proxy. Theoretically, votes can be passed on over and over and over again.[16] Instead of just casting a specific vote as in proxy voting, liquid democracy allows the delegate to actually participate in the process on behalf of the voter. If someone who delegated their vote to someone else dislikes the way in which the delegate voted, they can either vote themself or pick another delegate for the next vote.[2]

Crucial to the understanding of liquid democracy is the theory's view of the role of delegation in representative democracy. Representative democracy is seen as a form of governance whereby a single winner is determined for a predefined jurisdiction, with a change of delegation only occurring after the preset term length. In some instances, terms can be cut short by a forced recall election, though the recalled candidate can win the subsequent electoral challenge and carry out their term.

This is contrasted with most forms of representation referred to as "delegative". Delegates may not, but usually do, have specific limits on their term as delegates, nor do they represent specific jurisdictions. Some key differences include:

1. Optionality of term lengths.
2. Possibility for direct participation.
3. The delegate's power is decided in some measure by the voluntary association of members rather than an electoral victory in a predefined jurisdiction. (See also: Single transferable vote.)
4. Delegates remain re-callable at any time and in any proportion.
5. Often, the voters have the authority to refuse observance of a policy by way of popular referendum overriding delegate decisions or through nonobservance from the concerned members. This is not usually the case in representative democracy.
6. Possibility exists for differentiation between delegates in terms of what form of voting the member has delegated to them. For example: "you are my delegate on matters of national security and farm subsidies."[17][18]

In contrast to representative democracy, within liquid democracy, delegations of votes are transitive and not dependent on election periods. The concept of liquid democracy describes a form of collective decision-making, which combines elements of direct democracy and representative democracy through the use of software. This allows voters to either vote on issues directly, or to delegate their voting power to a trusted person or party. Moreover, participants are empowered to withdraw their votes at any time.

Voting periods can go through many stages before the final votes are computed. Also, when voters make use of the delegation option, the delegators are able to see what happened to their vote, ensuring the accountability of the system. The fact that delegators can revoke their votes from their representative, is another significant aspect of how liquid democracy can potentially refine contemporary representative democracy concepts.

By allowing to revoke votes at any time, society can replace representatives who are not providing ideal results and choose more promising representatives. In this way, voters are enabled to effectively choose the most appropriate or competent topic-specific representatives and members of a community or electorate, in real-time, can shape the well-being of their commons, by excluding undesired decision-makers and promoting the desired ones. The voting software LiquidFeedback for instance, through its connotation of liquidity, accounts to this real-time aspect, potentially providing a constantly changing representation of the voting community's current opinion.

Regarding objective-technological elements among liquid democracy software examples, it is reasonable to determine that they originally were not developed with an intention to replace the current and firmly established processes of decision-making in political parties or local governments. Based on academic research, it is significantly rather the case that liquid democracy software possesses the intrinsic function to contribute additional and alternative value to the processes of traditional elections, channels of communication and discussion, or public consultation.

Direct democracy is a form of popular control where all collective decisions are made by way of the direct votes of constituents. Typically liquid democracy is known to take the idea behind direct democracy, that voters can directly vote on policies, and scaling it. Liquid democracy is a sort of voluntary direct democracy in that participants can be included in decisions (and are usually expected to be, by default) but can opt out by way of abstaining or delegating their voting to someone else when they lack the time, interest, or expertise to vote on the delegated matter. By contrast, in direct democracy, all eligible voters are expected to stay knowledgeable on all events and political issues, since voters make every decision on these political issues.[2]

Bryan Ford explains that some of the current challenges to liquid democracy include the unintended concentration of delegated votes due to large numbers of people participating in platforms and decision making; building more secure and decentralized implementation of online platforms in order to avoid unscrupulous administrators or hackers; shortening the thresholds between voter privacy; and delegate accountability.[19]

Another criticism made against liquid democracy is the lack of access to digital platforms by the widespread population (the digital divide). In most developing countries, not every citizen has access to a smartphone, computer, or internet connection. In some developed countries, the same is true; in the United States, for example, 81% of Americans own a smartphone resulting in 19% of citizens without access.[20] This technological disparity both in access and knowledge would result in a more unbalanced participation than what already exists.[21]

In addition, liquid democracy may evolve into a type of meritocracy with decisions being delegated to those with knowledge on a specific subject or with required experience.[22] However, the general public could also make detrimental mistakes "about matters of the common good" due to simply not having enough accurate information about the issue. Another issue is that people's subjective interests that come into play while they are voting could "shape the welfare of their community", especially if one person has his/her own vote on a matter plus multiple others from delegation.[5]

• Delegated voting
• Collaborative filtering, which applies the same principle to information filtering rather than voting
• Delegate and trustee models of representation
• Direct representation
• Indirect election

• Delegative Democracy by Bryan Ford
• The Joy of Revolution: Chapter 2
• Industrial Worker: October 2008 details changes to the delegate model to move towards a more representative rather than delegative model.
• Liquid Democracy In Simple Terms by Jakob Jochmann
• The Belgian Pirate Party's voting-system
• LiquidFeedback
• Adhocracy a multilingual open source implementation of delegative democracy/liquid democracy.
• Agora Ex Machina A minimalist multilingual platform of Liquid Democracy
• Alois Paulin: Through Liquid Democracy to Sustainable Non-Bureaucratic Government. Journal of e-Democracy, Vol. 6, Iss. 2 (2014)
• Involv: an online Delegative Democracy platform
• Liquid Democracy by Dominic Schiener
• ' 'The Social Smart Contract' ' by Democracy Earth Foundation