Blockchain-based voting for direct democracy

Instead of watertight security, per se, I would suggest a system that does not post, nor even possess, information that can be traced to a specific member (no direct identifiers, just member-determined associative tags that can be validated online, or physically -as necessary). The key feature will be transparency: every member will be able to update and correct personal votes at any time, and any member will be able to see a rollcall list of votes presented under arbitrary, and member generated indentifiants (codes that do not contain any information to identify the member).

Also... DO NOT use ANYTHING profered by Kapersky Labs.

I think it’s interesting to note that Elon Musk has supported direct democracy for Mars.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/2/11837590/elon-musk-mars-government-direct-democracy-law-code-conference

I would love to also see people experimenting with liquid democracy since it could be difficult to keep everyone engaged in voting on every issue that must be decided on to keep things running well.

In the above article Musk also mentions sunset clauses. I would propose something very similar.

Use of sunset clauses:

1. If a law is based on the harm principle - meaning there is a high probability of significant harm if someone violates the law, then there should be no sunset clause or a blocking sunset clause (see 3).

2. If a law is not justified by the harm principle and is instead an expression of what a society, as decided by referendum, feels is in the interest of
   the good life or common good then the law should automatically expire after a time that is in proportion to how far above majority the vote goes. Meaning, if 50% is required for approval of a law then the amount about 50% determines the time period that the law is enacted for. If the maximum sunset for the proposed law is 5 years then 60% approval would mean 20% of 5 years or 1 year, etc. This type of sunset clause would be an expiring sunset clause'. This convention should work to ensure that the law reflects what the current population thinks of as theCommon Good".

3. If a law is a basic human rights law, then it should be justified by the harm principle and it should be protected from modification by a blocking sunset clause. A blocking sunset clause means a law can not be modified while the block is in effect. Once the sunset expires the law becomes a normal law with no expiration. Perhaps laws of this type would require super majority to pass and the blocking sunset clauses could be set to something like 100 years. Percent over super majority could be used to scale the sunset period like in the case of expiring sunset clauses. If there are human rights that are only guaranteed under certain conditions (e.g. universal health care, universal four year college) then these human rights could be declared Tier II rights and be assigned a shorter blocking sunset clause of say 25 or 50 years. Tier I rights would be guaranteed under all conditions (e.g. right to not be tortured, etc.) while Tier II rights would be guaranteed when for instance there is a particular per capita GDP or only during times of peace.

While this appears to be a good system for direct democracy voting activities, I should point out that direct democracy itself is not always beneficial, nor desirable. While there should be a mechanism that ensures the option of direct democracy (referendum voting), should the constituency believe that a representative body is not behaving proprely, voting takes a great deal of time... especially to conduct the research necessary to act as an informed voter.

I suggest that we rely on a representational government as much as possible. However, that governement (or, at least, the legislating and policy-setting bodies) should be itself under the rule of direct democracy, and subject to immediate recall by process of petition and referendum. Additionally, some legislation should be subject to eventual direct vote, or even constituent veto (where a predetermined number of constituents could block enactment of legislation).

I DO think, however, that all legislation, as well as all government activity, must be documented and made available to the constituency at large. That is, government shall not be permitted to maintain secrets from the constituency (for any formal government activities), except under conditions of ongoing investigation, and/or where disclosure might reasonably endanger the personal safety of any constituent. In other words, the constituency shall maintain direct democracy oversight over representative governement.