Article XI: Democracy

This Article establishes a system of continuous, informed, and voluntary democratic participation. Citizens may propose initiatives, vote on them at any time, and revise their votes as they choose. To ensure that decisions are made with understanding rather than impulse, each initiative shall be accompanied by clear explanatory material and a simple comprehension process. The purpose of this Article is to enable open participation while ensuring that voting is grounded in knowledge of the initiative’s purpose, consequences, and principal arguments.

Section 1: Initiatives

  1. Every initiative shall act upon exactly one Legal Domain, which it proposes to create, amend, or repeal.

  2. Any citizen may propose an initiative.
  3. Every initiative shall be constitutional in form and effect, and shall be drafted so as to be coherent, unambiguous, consistent, and complete.
  4. An initiative shall be cohesive. An initiative is cohesive when all its provisions relate to a single, clearly identifiable purpose, form an internally unified whole, and do not introduce unrelated or independent changes.

Section 2: Initiative Drafting System

The Initiative Drafting System is a computerised system that shall provide the following facilities:

  1. Allows citizens with online accounts to create and edit draft initiatives, with version control.
  2. Applies automated analysis, including the possible use of artificial intelligence, to identify errors, inconsistencies, or apparent constitutional conflicts before a draft is submitted for judicial review.
  3. Assigns unique identifiers to draft initiatives.
  4. Provides online forums for community discussion of draft initiatives.
  5. Supports informal community voting to provide feedback to the author on alternative choices within the draft.
  6. Allows draft initiatives to be submitted for constitutional review.
  7. Notifies Judiciary services of pending review requests.
  8. Allows Judiciary services to annotate draft initiatives with comments.
  9. Notifies the author when judicial review is complete.
  10. Manages payment for judicial review services.
  11. Transmits initiatives that have passed constitutional review to the Voting System

Section 3: Constitutional Review

  1. Every initiative must undergo a formal constitutional review before it may be made available for voting.
  2. To submit an initiative for review, the proponent must upload it into the Initiative Drafting System.
  3. Constitutional review shall be conducted by accredited judicial services in accordance with the procedures set out in Article VIII: Judiciary. Each judicial service involved in the review shall issue a binary determination of whether the initiative complies with this Constitution.
  4. The purpose of the review is solely to determine whether the initiative complies with this Constitution. The review shall not assess the desirability, wisdom, or political merit of the initiative.
  5. An initiative passes constitutional review if the final judicial determination, reached through the adjudication and appeal procedures of Article VIII: Judiciary, finds that the initiative complies with this Constitution.
  6. An initiative that fails constitutional review shall not proceed to a vote. The proponent may submit a revised initiative for review any number of times.
  7. The cost of constitutional review shall be borne by the proponent of the initiative.
  8. An initiative that passes constitutional review shall be published and made available for voting in accordance with the procedures set out in this Article.

Section 4: Voting

  1. Every citizen shall have an online account through which they may vote on:
    • initiatives that have passed formal constitutional review; and
    • all public services.
  2. Voting shall be expressed as a numerical score in \(K\).

    For example, when \( \rho_{\max} = 2 \), the scores correspond to:

    • −2: strongly against
    • −1: against
    • 0: abstain (neutral)
    • +1: for
    • +2: strongly for
  3. A score of 0 is equivalent to not voting.
  4. Voting is optional.
  5. For every citizen \(c \in P_{\text{cit}}\), whether resident or not, the Voting System maintains:
    1. \(\psi(c,i) \in K\): the score assigned to each initiative \(i\);
    2. \(\rho(c,s) \in K\): the score assigned to each service \(s\).
  6. Votes are private (secret ballot).
  7. Citizens shall have a reasonable understanding of each initiative or service they vote on, including its purpose and the principal arguments for and against.
  8. Voting on an initiative shall remain open until it satisfies the criterion for registration.
  9. Voting on services shall remain open without time limit.
  10. A citizen may change their vote at any time and as often as they choose.

Section 5: Total scores of initiatives and public services

Although \(\psi(c,i)\) and \(\rho(c,s)\) are defined in the VS for all citizens, the various systems that use these scores only consider resident citizens.

\(S_{\mathrm{init}}(s)\) is the total score of initiative \(i\):

\[S_{\mathrm{init}}(s) = \sum \{ \psi(c,s) | c \in P_{\text{res}} \}\].

\(S_{\mathrm{svc}}(s)\) is the total score of service \(s\):

\[S_{\mathrm{svc}}(s) = \sum \{ \rho(c,s) | c \in P_{\text{res}} \}\].

Section 6: Criterion for registration of an initiative

For any initiative \(i\), define:

  • \(N_f(i) = \lvert \{\, c \in P_{\text{res}} \mid \psi(c,i) > 0 \,\} \rvert\), the number of resident‑citizen votes cast in favour;
  • \(N_a(i) = \lvert \{\, c \in P_{\text{res}} \mid \psi(c,i) < 0 \,\} \rvert\), the number of resident‑citizen votes cast against.

All strictly positive scores are treated identically for the purpose of registration, and all strictly negative scores are treated identically. The magnitude of a score does not affect registration, ensuring that no strategic advantage can be obtained by altering score intensity.

The predicate \(\operatorname{eligible}\) is defined as follows:

\[ \operatorname{eligible}(N_f, N_a, N, \lambda, \eta, \chi) := \bigl( N_f \ge \lambda (N_f + N_a) \bigr) \;\land\; \bigl( N_f \ge \eta \bigr) \;\land\; \bigl( N_f + N_a \ge \chi N \bigr). \]

An initiative \(i\) is registered if and only if

\[ \operatorname{eligible}(N_f(i),\, N_a(i),\, \lvert P_{\text{res}}\rvert,\, \lambda,\, \eta,\, \chi) \]

holds, using the values of \(\lambda, \eta, \chi\) corresponding to the type of initiative, as specified in Article III: Constants Section 3.

Section 7: Registration of initiatives

  1. At the end of each day, any initiative open for voting that meets the criterion defined in Section 6 is registered.
  2. When an initiative is registered, the following actions are performed:
    1. The initiative is removed from the VS, so it is no longer available to be voted on. Voting on the initiative therefore ceases.
    2. The initiative is recorded in the Governance Kernel defined in Article XII: Governance Kernel, an event‑sourcing database that records all registered initiatives.
    3. If the initiative \(i\) creates a new service \(s\), then:
      • the VS adds the service to the set of services that can be voted on;
      • for every \(c \in P_{cit} \), initialise \(\rho(c,s)\) to \(\psi(c,i)\).

        Although voting on the initiative has closed, the votes cast on the initiative become the initial votes on the service it created. Citizens may subsequently vote on the service indefinitely.

  3. Once registered, an initiative shall not be deregistered.

Section 8: Votable numeric parameters (VNPs)

  1. A nationwide parameter referenced by an initiative may be designated as a Votable Numeric Parameter (VNP). Examples include:
    • blood alcohol limits for drink‑driving laws
    • statutory time limits
    • noise pollution thresholds
  2. Citizens may define their preferred value of a VNP and may change it at any time.
  3. The value of a VNP shall equal the median of all voted values.

Section 9: Explanatory material and comprehension

  1. The author of an initiative shall provide clear and accessible explanatory material sufficient for citizens to understand the initiative, its purpose, its expected consequences, and the principal arguments for and against.
  2. Explanatory material may include text, diagrams, audio, video, or any other medium suitable for communicating the substance of the initiative.
  3. The author shall prepare a neutral comprehension assessment based on the explanatory material. A citizen must complete this assessment before casting a vote on the initiative.
  4. The comprehension assessment shall be designed to confirm engagement and understanding, not to exclude voters. A citizen may attempt the assessment as many times as they choose.
  5. The explanatory material and comprehension assessment for each initiative shall be publicly available.