Citizens' direct democracy, new system

[mm at iniref.org]

An example of improvements towards more direct democracy, assisted by 
internet and mobile phones.

We should introduce this and better systems in UK and our countries and 
cities.

In early 2012 the Finnish parliament made law which enables a large 
number of citizens to put forward a law proposal. The proposers have six 
months to collect 50 thousand endorsements which is about 1.2 percent of 
eligible voters.

The proposal can be in the form of a drafted law and assuming that 
certain standards have been met the parliament is obliged to treat the 
proposal like a parliamentary "bill".

This is not full "citizen-led" (direct) democracy because, even if 
parliament rejects the proposal and refuses to put it into law, no 
referendum or plebiscite of the electorate must follow.

So, the Finnish citizens' initiative might be termed an agenda-setting 
tool, with small teeth (e.g. parliament must process and debate or 
consider the proposal and may NOT simply ignore it).

This innovation in governance shows some features of "electronic 
democracy" (e-democracy). Statements of support from signatories may be 
collected electronically or in paper form. The government has set up an 
online system to collect statements of support. A self-management system 
may also be used subject to certification by the Communications 
Regulatory Authority. An NGO named Open Ministry has assisted people and 
groups wishing to make a law-proposal. Open ministry states that in one 
case "the threshold of 50 000 supporters needed to pass the initiative 
to Parliament was met within 9 hours of launching the campaign and by 
midnight some 120 000 people had signed the initiative with their online 
bank codes or mobile phone."

A recent successful campaign has produced a law proposal which aims to 
reduce penalties on small-scale private downloading from peer-to-peer 
networks. In Finland as elsewhere, strong public opposition has grown 
against draconian penalties imposed for apparently trivial on-line 
offences involving "downloads".
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Campaign for direct democracy in Britain
Citizens' Initiative and Referendum I&R ~ GB
http://www.iniref.org/  Link to site index
http://www.iniref.org/carta.htm  Election campaign call


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