Delegated voting

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Illustration of delegated voting : voters to the left of the blue line have delegated their votes. The voters to the right of the line voted directly. The numbers indicate the number of voters represented by each delegate (including the delegate himself)

Delegated voting is a form of joint decision-making within the framework of a direct democratic system that has been supplemented by representative elements.

The concept enables everyone involved in an election or vote to either cast his or her vote personally (element of direct democracy) or to have someone else cast his or her vote (similar to representative democracy). The authorized person can - depending on the area of ​​application - also be a group, e.g. B. a political party . In contrast to the classic transfer of votes in representative democracy, powers of attorney to cast votes can extend to individual decisions as well as to comprehensive policy areas and are revocable. Many supporters of delegated voting hope that the votes will accumulate in an evolutionary process among competent people.

Someone who has been authorized (revocable at any time) to vote for someone else can, in turn, authorize someone else to vote for himself and his principal, i.e. H. the transfer of votes is transitive .

Liquid Democracy

The use of delegated voting for topic-related decisions in politics and in companies is often subsumed under the catchphrase liquid democracy . There are different ideas about how exactly the transferable delegation of votes should take place. For example, calls for the Pirate Party of Berlin for internal party decisions about a Delegated Voting beyond moderation free discourse . However, there is no consistent use of the term liquid democracy ; However, what all definitions have in common is the topic-related use of delegated voting for decision-making.

Use in politics

Jan Huwald, political director of the Pirate Party Germany in 2007, presented Liquid Democracy as an alternative to existing parliaments. In this way, voters can decide for themselves whether they want to deal with a political question themselves or choose a party for it. Before using it as a social system, however, you want to experiment with it yourself. Accordingly, the delegation was used in various regional associations to form opinions within the party.

From November 2012 to mid-2015, the Friesland district used the LiquidFriesland public participation platform , which worked according to the principles of delegated voting . The citizens had refused the platform from the start. In February 2015 launched Rotenburg (Wümme) , the Civic Platform ROW along the lines of Liquid Friesland. Again, the system is not accepted. The latest post is already a year old.

Super delegate

In particular through the chaining of proxies, but also with unlinked authorization, persons u. U. combine a very large voice weight. Such people were also referred to as " super delegates " in the context of the Pirate Party Germany .

The (theoretically usable) power resulting from such transfers of votes is limited, however, since powers of attorney for delegated voting can be revoked at any time. Klaus Peukert, then IT head of the Pirate Party Germany, said in 2012 that his 79 votes as a super delegate could “be gone overnight” if he took erroneous positions. A study on the case study of the Pirate Party Germany also showed that superdelegates used their voting powers predominantly in the interests of the other participants.

Use of computers

Only the use of computer technology , in particular the wide availability of the Internet , makes delegated voting practicable. However, the use of online processes leads to various challenges and restrictions in the case of political votes (see also: e-democracy ) .

Suffrage principles

Any system of computer-based coordination is susceptible to manipulation with regard to the procedural sequences. The Federal Constitutional Court in its judgment on voting machines found that it is currently not technically possible to digitally conduct elections that both the bid secret elections as well as the requirement of traceability sufficiently reflect the electoral process. It declared the use of voting machines in the elections to the 16th German Bundestag to be incompatible with the Basic Law . In Germany, secret elections are also provided for certain people to be elected within political parties . A possible way out for the application of delegated voting by means of computer-based systems is the publication of the voting data in the sense of an open vote . Open votes are also implemented by the two software products Adhocracy and LiquidFeedback . Since secret elections (e.g. elections of a party executive) cannot be made openly because of the principle, these would have to continue e.g. B. be carried out at a party conference by secret ballot.

See also: Data protection debate about LiquidFeedback

Digital divide

Critical voices fear that if not only the decision-making process, but also the discourse accompanying the decision-making process is largely mediated online, the disadvantage of those groups that are particularly affected by the digital divide will increase.

Proponents of delegated voting argue that, as a result of the increasing use of electronic means of communication , delegated voting can quickly determine which political projects are eligible for a majority in the population of an area as well as in parties and other organizations. Due to the increasing spread of Internet connections in Germany and their active use (as of 2013: 77.2 percent), proponents of Liquid Democracy consider the digital divide to be a noteworthy, but increasingly negligible problem. There is also the argument that offline elections are not without hurdles.

See also

literature

  • Jan Behrens, Axel Kistner, Andreas Nitsche, Björn Swieczek: The Principles of LiquidFeedback . Interactive Democracy eV, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-00-044795-2 ( liquidfeedback.org ).
  • Bernd Guggenberger : “Liquefaction” of politics - what then? - essay . From Politics and Contemporary History , September 10, 2012 ( online ).
  • Alois Paulin : Through Liquid Democracy to Sustainable Non-Bureaucratic Government . Journal of e-Democracy , Vol. 6 (2014), Iss. 2 ( online ).
  • Angel Tchorbadjiiski: Liquid Democracy , diploma thesis on the data protection- secure technical implementation of delegated voting including traceability of one's own vote (at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische (RWTH) University of Aachen, Informatics 4 ComSys), winner of the FIfF Study Prize 2012
  • Laszlo Trankovits: A Defense of Democracy - Against the Immoderate Citizen - Essay . From Politics and Contemporary History , September 10, 2012 ( online ).
  • Frieder Vogelmann: Fluid operating systems. Liquid democracy as a democratic power technology . From Politics and Contemporary History , November 22, 2012 ( online ).
  • Andreas Voßkuhle : About democracy in Europe . From Politics and Contemporary History , March 23, 2012 ( online ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sebastian Jabbusch: The Idea of ​​Liquid Democracy Today ( Memento from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 422 kB). April 2011
  2. ^ Daniel Roleff: Digital Politics and Participation: Possibilities and Limits . Digital section enters politics . From politics and contemporary history . February 6, 2012
  3. ^ A. Paulin: Research Agenda towards Structured and Sustainable Non-Bureaucratic Government , Vienna University of Technology - Faculty of Informatics, 2015. Retrieved January 28, 2016.
  4. ↑ Peter Mühlbauer : Decision-making via software. Heise online. January 7, 2010
  5. ^ Paolo Boldi, Francesco Bonchi, Carlos Castillo, Sebastiano Vigna: Viscous Democracy for Social Networks . In: Communications of the ACM . Volume 54, No. 6 . The Association for Computing Machinery, New York June 2011, p. 129-137 , doi : 10.1145 / 1953122.1953154 .
  6. ^ Frankfurter Rundschau: Software turns company management upside down ( Memento from December 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). Article dated December 17, 2014, accessed December 21, 2016.
  7. ↑ a b Statutes of the Pirate Party Berlin, § 11 Liquid Democracy , accessed on January 21, 2016.
  8. ↑ Jelena Gregorius: Does the Digital Age Require New Models of Democracy? - Lasswell's Policy Scientist of Democracy vs. Liquid Democracy . Retrieved January 21, 2016.
  9. ↑ a b Interview with Jan Huwald on the plans of the Pirate Party at Telepolis
  10. ↑ Rules of Procedure for the Permanent General Assembly, § 2 Assembly, as an annex to the statutes of the Pirate Party of Saxony , accessed on January 22, 2016.
  11. ↑ Public participation: District of Friesland introduces Liquid Feedback. Zeit Online, November 9, 2012, accessed February 7, 2013 .
  12. ↑ YouTube: LiquidFriesland / LiquidFeedback 2.0 - An introduction. October 14, 2014, accessed January 30, 2016 . Linked to LiquidFriesland - information on the platform. Retrieved January 30, 2016 .
  13. ↑ "Citizens' Platform ROW" will be launched in the coming weeks - digital democracy in the Rotenburger Kreishaus. District newspaper . February 19, 2015. Retrieved December 12, 2015
  14. ^ A b Niels Lohmann: About super delegates. December 10, 2012, accessed February 16, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Detlef Borchers: Pirate Party uses Liquid Feedback 2.0. In: heise online. Heise Medien GmbH & Co. KG, August 13, 2012, accessed on February 16, 2016 .
  16. ↑ Christoph Carl Kling, Jerome Kunegis, Heinrich Hartmann, Markus Strohmaier, Steffen Staab: Voting Behavior and Power in Online Democracy: A Study of LiquidFeedback in Germany's Pirate Party . March 26, 2015, arxiv : 1503.07723v1 .
  17. ↑ Jan Behrens, Axel Kistner, Andreas Nitsche, Björn Swieczek: The Principles of LiquidFeedback . 1st edition. Interactive Democracy eV, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-00-044795-2 , p. 15, 145 ( liquidfeedback.org ).
  18. ↑ Bernd Guggenberger : “Liquefaction” of politics - what then? - essay. In: From Politics and Contemporary History. Federal Agency for Civic Education, September 10, 2012, accessed on February 13, 2016 .
  19. ↑ Constanze Kurz, Frank Rieger, Rop Gonggrijp: Description and analysis of the tests on NEDAP voting computers , May 30, 2007, accessed on January 24, 2016.
  20. ↑ BVerfGE 123, 39 - voting computer
  21. ↑ Law on Political Parties (Party Law), Section 15 Formation of will in the organs
  22. ↑ Mela Eckenfels: Four Liquid Democracy Tools in the Test , Linux-Magazin 01/2012, accessed on January 24, 2016. "Every vote and every contribution can always be viewed in Adhocracy [...]."
  23. ↑ Website liquidfeedback.org , accessed on January 24, 2016. “Decisions are made by recorded vote only, and all voting-relevant data in LiquidFeedback is made available to all participants in both human- and machine-readable form.”
  24. ↑ Leonhard Dobusch, Yussi Pick: Everything flows. Liquid Democracy in Theory and Practice (PDF; 205 kB). 2012, p. 10f.
  25. ↑ ARD / ZDF: Mobile Internet use is increasing rapidly - the boom in end devices leads to a large increase in daily usage time. Online study, 2013.