Демоэкс: Шведский эксперимент с прямой демократией онлайн

Swedish political party and experiment with direct democracy
Demoex, an appellation short for democracy experiment, is a local Swedish political party and an experiment with direct democracy in Vallentuna, a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden. 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. 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 political 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.

Although Demoex does not stand for any defined policy, it has a clear ideology: To extend the degree of democracy in society. They claim that technological solutions have surpassed the political. With the help of information technology Demoex wants to create liquid democracy.

The ideology is based on the thoughts from Karl Popper and Henri Bergson about open society; the vision of a society built on the principle of public access to official records. Demoex strives for increased access and partaking in the politics.

Demoex uses statistical distribution. It means that the purpose of Demoex representatives is to reflect the members' opinions as the online statistics indicate. If Demoex had 5 mandates and 60% of the users' votes for a proposal, then three of the representatives would vote "yes" to that proposal. The rounding follows according to mathematical principles. If it becomes impossible to reflect the members' opinions appropriately in one question, then one representative would give a blank vote. Statistical distribution is used because it gains democracy. In every question, there ought to be only one democratic election. Many sub elections on the same issue can easily put the majority principle aside.

The founding activists of Demoex also made rules for all participants to follow. They believed that the rules were necessary to avoid chaos. After they had set the rules and found an accurate work flow, they had to advertise the concept. They distributed leaflets in the local postboxes, made Demoex T shirts, and borrowed a house van as base for the electoral campaign. A certain interest from the media gave Demoex some attention. Though the advertising campaign was small and cheap, it was enough to win the first mandate of a direct democracy party in Europe.