Digital Democracy
Researching Alternative Forms of Governance
Digital Democracy explores alternative systems of governance through the lens of values and a communal voting methodology which allows all members of Emily Carr University to collaborate and build a community which better represents them. The aim of this research is to begin building a framework for a decision-making tool through voting for the school and broader public to adopt and use as a catalyst for change and empowerment in their own communities.
In 2018, my home town of Winnipeg held a plebiscite to give the public a chance to vote on the subject of reopening the Portage and Main street crossing for pedestrian foot traffic. This was the first plebiscite in 35 years. This had me questioning why this wasn’t a regular occurrence for many other decisions.
Many cryptocurrency organizations such as Bitcoin, Solana, Cardano and Polkadot use a governance system which includes all members of its platform when proposing and enacting changes to the system. Proposals are submitted, reviewed and voted on by its members through its referenda. These systems are a fresh take on how digital systems can be implemented to empower individuals.
Understanding how the school currently functions when it comes to actioning student ideas was an important part of building a system that would integrate seamlessly with its current processes. Interviewing the Student Union President and representatives provided valuable insight into where a gap could be filled by improving the proposal experience for both the school and students.
As part of this research, I discovered several organizations attempting their own forms of governance as a means to making major community decisions. Shape Your City Vancouver provides residents an opportunity to provide input and help develop projects within their communities like the St George Rainway; Hearthstone Village is an Equity Co-op with Sociocracy as the governance model. Sociocracy is a decision making method rooted in the values of equivalency, transparency and participation – Their motto is “Good Enough for Now, Safe Enough to Try.”
The system was initially designed as working independently from the workshop and existing completely online. The final outcome has the workshop as the focal point of discussion and creation, with voting and further discussion and submissions taking place online for people who can’t attend workshops. This approach provides multiple ways for the community to interact at levels they are comfortable doing so.
The best way to test my system would be a real-world setting within a workshop environment. My original plan for the workshop was to have an open discussion which would lead to a subject to pursue, but I later thought it would be beneficial to provide a path for participants to follow on the first attempt, so I decided focus on redesigning a space in the school. The workshop would need to be divided into two sections due to the time constraints involved.
The Cascade Voting system, which was developed as part of this research, uses a series of rank-choice voting with opportunities for ongoing discussion, reiteration and compromise to develop a solution that is accepted by all parties involved. The rank-choice process has proposals and participants placed in groups of maximum ten, with the top two from each group continuing to the next round with other group winners. This process continues until a single outcome is determined, at which point compromises are established based on ideas from losing proposals and then integrated into the winning outcome.
The Cascade workshop started with participants viewing images of 12 spaces within the school while considering their ideal values for them, which opened up conversations by generating relatable talking points which were easy to respond to and debate.
The discussions provided many useful insights into each space, with participants sharing their own experiences around the school, often finding common ground to begin working from and sometimes educating one another about the school.
Participants were then shown AI generated redesigns of each space created with MidJourney as inspiration before creating their own proposals
Participants created their ideas in any medium they felt comfortable using and then presented their ideas to the group.
To test the Cascade system’s effectiveness, the workshop compared it to the First-Past-the-Post system which we use in our current elections, and the Consensus system which is practiced by many indigenous cultures and requires all members voting to approve of an idea for it to continue.
Online rank-choice voting forms used during the workshop allowed for a quick way to tally up results while also providing key insights into how the group voted for further discussion.
The First-Past-the-Post system had a single vote to determine the outcome. The winner had a design which focused on flexibility of the space with small portable furniture.
The Consensus system had many good discussions, however a full consensus could not be reached in the allotted time so an outcome was not determined.
The Cascade system had a result which also focused on furniture which was easily adaptable to different seating arrangements, but also emphasized plants for a more natural atmosphere.
To end the workshop, participants had a chance to do a final redesign as a group after considering what would be missed from the losing proposals through the lens of their values. These compromises were then integrated into the winning proposal as part of the final redesign.
A final rank-choice vote was held and a winner determined. The winning design emphasized flexibility with the furniture, lights that emulate natural lighting and plants to create a more natural atmosphere. The winning design was then remixed using MidJourney to see what a real-world outcome could look like.
