The Direct Democracy Helsinki Group

Hello there, my name is Pedro Aibéo, I am accompanied by Marius and Gweal. We are part of a group called Direct Democracy Helsinki. This came out of the last elections in spring 2017, which we were candidates for the city council. We decided to continue this process of developing direct democracy, so I will try to explain this as fast possible.

Mainly the problem is that, ok, everything is going good we are heading to what is now called Monitory democracy. There are different institutions, associations monitoring each other. This is looking good but, There are still a lot of problems, like for example, it’s quite an old system, it's a closed system, it does not allow much diversity, adaptability to change, there is no accountability, secret voting is an awkward system Christian based… from Australia… Voting receipt could have been implemented 10 years ago, it has not yet been done, a lot of political jargon, sometimes it just looks like a big soap opera! Trump, you all know that case, gossiping of course. And there is no lingua franca being used. A good example is Helsinki, 15% of the population does not speak Finnish nor Swedish, yet we have to vote,

hum, how does that work?

So we cannot escape complexity, I think we all agree on that. It’s going to be more complicated to be part of a political system, but how can we participate if things are going to be more complicated?

Well we have to increase both education and participation tools. We do not believe it has to be in a revolution rather in a evolution way, so step-wise. 3 Stages:

Stage 1 would be direct democracy.

to develop a simple app where people just vote for their city council's representat and then he can either listen to what people are voting, every time he or she has to make a decision in the city council or just ignore it.

With this he/she just posts online whatever decision he/she has to make people vote for it, than he/she should listen to it otherwise he/she is just going to be unpopular. This is just a little step towards a more flexible feedback on a daily basis.

it's happening similarly to what the pirate party is trying to implement, called Liquid democracy

Stage 2 Fuid democracy.

This is part of a larger plan, obviously we can be more fluid about it, it doesn't have to be so that I elect a person for 4 years and it's done, it can be flexible, I represent 1000 people, and then people start to follow me because I made the right decisions.

Stage 3 Demarchy.

And of course the 3rd stage can be wider, why do we need elections anyhow?

This is the roadmap, Direct Democracy, Fluid Democracy, Demarchy

How the app could work?

I choose my Councillor, I choose Noora

she has to vote on these 3 things,

about a new hospital, I read about it

then I can choose what I'd vote for

I can even add a new option

I vote, yes, no matter what the costs are

then I identify myself, easy going

and that's it

The city councilor can just decide, ok, 3000 people voted that I say yes

so probably I (the elected city councilor) should say yes

otherwise people will be angry about her decision, maybe not following her anymore

You can read more about it

there is a white paper about this

Kiitos (Thank you!)

will this not increase populism? (question from the audience)

The Swiss model is a good comparison. Direct Democracy is based on the idea that people have to be responsible for their own mistakes so, collective thinking is very important, I voted directly, I made a mistake, I then learn.

If I just vote for somebody to make that for me,I do not take responsibility. it's very different

More info at: http://directdemocracyhelsinki.org/

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Article by: Pedro Aibéo

Pedro Aibéo is a Design Architect and Civil Engineer with over 50 buildings designed and built worldwide, currently practicing at AIBEO architecture. He is a Kone FoundationResearch Fellow at Aalto University for the Doctoral Research of “Architectural Democracy” and a Visiting Associate Professor at UNAM University, Mexico. His research and practice interests are multidisciplinary spanning from arts, science, design and politics