Democratic solution process steps

Now that we understand statements and assessments, we are prepared to understand our new democratic solution process. Unlike Polis, a Citizen Governance Website would not be merely a survey app or a voting app that asks one question. It would contain a process that led participants through 4 steps to the best collaborative solution for each issue.

1. Discuss the issue and become informed

2. Brainstorm possible solution features

3. Determine the best solution with measurements, costs, and funding sources

4. Submit the solution for judicial review

Our democratic solution process would begin when an issue was activated by the Federal Council. The next issue to become active would be the one with the highest priority. If multiple issues had the same priority (and some could), then the next issue would be the issue with the most followers rounded to the nearest 1,000. My thinking is that the more followers, the more interest in the issue and the more interest, the higher its priority to the people. This allows groups to increase the priority of their issues by increasing the number of issue followers. If two issues had the same priority and close to the same number of followers, then the issue that was submitted first would be at the top of the list. I anticipate that about 3 to 4 issues a month would be activated on average per council.

Preparation by the Federal Council and its staff

From here on, when I refer to a Federal Council, I am referring to both the council members and their staff. The Federal Council would perform three preparation activities before activating an issue.

1. The Federal Council would study the issue and enter any demographic statements that were needed specifically for the issue outside of the normal demographics in the profiles of the participating citizens.

2. The council would create the questions for each step, making any changes to the standard questions as needed for the issue. For each question, they would enter any statements in advance for participants to assess that the council felt were important from their perspective.

3. If necessary, the Federal Council would write an introduction to the issue that would include any commentary or special instructions that would be helpful to participants.

Notifications

Each time a new step of an issue was released, everyone who was following the issue would be notified automatically by email or text. Staff would also announce the release on the council's website, on its social media pages, and as a press release for the media. In some situations, the Federal Council could submit the press release directly to appropriate publications. All notifications would contain the name of the issue, the issue description, and the issue number to make it easy to find.

One step at a time

Each of the 4 steps would be released one at a time when the results of the previous step were sufficiently complete to provide meaningful input for the next step. Federal Council members and staff could submit issues and personally participate in any issue as individual citizens.

The rest of this chapter goes through each step of the democratic solution process to illustrate how it brings people to a consensus on the best solution for each issue.