How would the system work?
Below is the basic framework for the voting system allowing the public to choose the way forward.
Public Petitions
Public Petitions are signatures. For any action the government is taking that you wish to change or stop, a petition can be created and signed.
Petitions that gain enough support by way of signatures will succeed in having the governments actions halted.
At Enact we believe that having the ability to stop your government from doing something is a basic human right, and we'd go as far as saying without this ability, we do not really live in a democracy at all.
At the moment we have government petitions, but as we've seen many times, it doesn't matter how many people sign, the government continues stubbornly with their own plans and agenda.
Enact gives you the means to control your government and country, without any need for protest, simply sign the petitions which represent your views.
Department Directives
Government departments control how things run; they have a Minister assigned to manage them, such as Education, Healthcare or the Treasury.
At the moment if you wish to change the course of just one of these departments you have to vote for a completely new government!
Department directives are where we focus in on the policies of each department as a whole. Setting long team goals or changing it more fundamentally than an individual petition might.
There are around 30 departments, so directive votes will be cycled through gradually. How long each takes depends on its size, complexity.
Both Public Petitions and Department Directives lead to the next stage.
Proposals
If Public Petitions and Department Directives are presenting the current issues, then Proposals are a list of possible solutions.
Voters log in and rank the Proposals in preference order. This is not the final vote, this stage is to separate good, popular ideas from bad, unpopular ones. Enabling voters to do this is FAR more preferable than Politicians dictating the outcomes. Like 'Ask the Audience' on a quiz show, they are almost never wrong, and the more people you ask the better the outcome.
How Proposals are created is a key feature to Enact. Our methods are what separate us from standard direct democracy, and give our laws a much greater scrutiny than our current system has. This is covered in detail on the Proposal Creation page.
Final Vote
The Final Vote is between the winning Proposal vs No change. From ranking and eliminating the Proposals we will have the 'most popular' option as chosen by the public. We now have to establish if that Proposal has majority support.
It would be no use implementing a Proposal that only 30 percent of the public want, by using this Final Vote we ensure policy that the majority of voters agree with.
If the No Change vote wins then nothing changes, and the onus shifts to the Proposal Creators to collaborate and refine their ideas to appeal to more voters. If the Proposal wins, it goes to Parliament and the Civil Service to be ENACTed into law.
Your Other Voting Avenues
Believe it or not, the majority of laws passed in the UK are not created, debated or even reviewed by our politicians. They are given to us by outside agencies. This sounds worse than it is.
Outside agencies are just Regulators; for automotive standards, food standards, pharmaceutical products, etc. etc.
They pass through the House of Commons by default, and will only be reviewed or debated if an MP speaks up. That system is OK, but there's an awful lot to read for a small group of politicians; so they largely go through unscrutinised.
With Enact, the Civil Service will publish all Statutory Instruments on the online platform.
You can select what you read through and there is a simple 'Red Flag' button to click if you feel the law needs a bit more scrutiny.
Statutory Instruments that receive enough 'Red Flags' will be debated, with industry expert opinions given in the House of Commons.
The statutory Instrument flagging system is fully optional. You are not required to read through any of them.
However, if you are interested or you work in that particular industry; Enact gives you a meaningful say where it matters.
Local, City and Parish Councils will simply publish (in plain English) all their plans and decisions{1} on the Enact online platform.
You can read through and click the 'Red Flag' Button if you disagree with something for whatever reason.
If a certain decision generates enough 'Red Flags' the Council will open a 'Discussion Forum' on the matter. Here you can give your feedback{2} so the Council can review their decisions and re-submit their revised plans.
This system is fully optional, but from the feedback we've had it will be very popular.
This tool provides not just the immediate fixes that are sometimes needed with local issues, but also, you'll be able to compare which Councils have the most 'Red Flags', this allows you to make an educated decision when your next Local Council election comes around.
If your Council has a couple of 'Red Flags' that were explained and addressed in full = Good Council.
If your Council had loads of 'Red Flags' with an unwillingness to adapt to the public's concern = Time to vote for a better Council.
{1} Councils do not publish ALL their actions, only their new plans and changes to your services.
{2} Although you can remain anonymous
when commenting on the Discussion Forums, they will be moderated.
Democracy With Enact
Law changes that affect the whole United Kingdom such as crime, taxes or rights are voted on by all voting age citizens. It is a high bar to get enough signatures for a successful Petition as these laws affect all of society. Nationwide changes should be made on merit, and only on issues that prove themselves to be important to the public.
Local votes are established in the same manner via Public Petitions and encompass a parish, town or county council. Local votes are not for laws, as no area of the UK has different laws to another but are to tailor services, amenities and traditions to best suit that area. For example: A school located in the countryside could choose to use that resource for teaching, building it into their school ethos and programs, whilst still adhering to the national curriculum.
A Country within the UK can also vote on their own "local" issues but again this would not include laws, taxes or rights different to the rest of the UK. For example England could vote on a cultural change such as having their own anthem, as Scotland and Wales have. It is not the laws and rules that make a place unique but the people, culture, environment and traditions.
A once sovereign country would be able to vote to become independent. This means Scotland or Northern Ireland could vote to leave the UK. However, independence plans and Proposals would be presented before the Final Vote. This would be done via the Enact system just like other policy changes so that voters have the options set out to pick from. They could of course then choose to run Enact as a separate entity or go another way.
Lastly the Enact app and technology will be created for all devices with any person who can't use them able to use postal votes or attend their local Council Offices for assistance. The system will work anywhere with an internet connection.
- The Armed Forces trigger a vote if they need directions for defensive response (non critical) or to trigger action and changes to how it is run.
- Emergency petition requiring 5 percent of population to trigger an unchanged but speeded up vote process.
Enact will work with the current judicial system building on English common law. A decision by Enact vote could not be overturned by any court or body only by another vote.
Currently when an Act of Parliament is passed it often does not have much detail this being added later using Statutory Instruments effectively the small laws that make up body of the Act. They also make up much of the changes going through parliament such as food standards, electronics safety regulations and changes from external bodies such as the World Health Organisation.
MPs are given the power to create these and while you can look them up currently the people have very limited recourse to edit them in practice. Along with other measures below Enact will introduce a flag notification system so that incorrect or unneeded instruments can be tagged by the public. When a certain number of flags is reached MPs will need to investigate and depending on the problem fix it or escalate to a vote if important enough. If the public is still not happy with the way it has been dealt with they can also escalate and take it out of MPs hands.
Tweaking this so Enact runs smoothly we need to reduce the number of instruments each year so MPs have less to add reducing their power in this area and to allow the public more influence over this important part of law making.
To reduce the number needed after an Act is passed we will use the different Enact stages to fill them in as a proposal works its way through.
Firstly any proposals that come up for a vote must already be costed, shown to be factually accurate and show clear figures in projections as well as how much more or less it is expected to cost the tax payer. Next once a proposal has "won" the proposal vote it will be fleshed out in much more detail ready for the final vote.
This also helps with the fact that once a final vote has passed it will be fairly close to finalized so may come into force sooner and also when people vote in that final yes or no they will have the majority of the details on how it will work in practice.
As well as UK wide statutory instruments some come from external bodies like the United Nations. They work in a similar way but the details come from outside national government. It is important that the public is able to edit and remove these if they feel they are starting to push beyond the stated goals of those organizations. So flags can also be used here to tag anomalies and a public vote can revoke or change them.
Three main types of oversight will be used to screen proposals to make sure they are truthful as factually correct as reasonably possible and that forecasts and plans will do what they are said to along with implementation and monitoring after completion. The government will have departments working through proposals for petitions and teams to plan and implement, all information will be published on the government site for anyone to check with ways to flag problems. Oversight of the workings of government bodies and departments will also be multi-faceted. Public votes would take precedence over these, being able to remove or edit as the public decide.
MPs will be keeping watch over their departments and voting system and will be required to report mismanagement problems or improvements. Both 3rd parties and the public will be able to monitor with a reporting and improvement section on the government site. If a problem needs more input then it can be escalated to a vote. Anyone working for government will have built into their contract best practice employment conditions similar to the private sector.