Liquid Gold - Liquid Democracy Reinvented

This project for Sitra's Junction 2024 Digital Democracy challenge explores the potential of implementing a form of liquid democracy as a new model for modern governance. While liquid democracy as a system is not in itself new, we believe that we have solved the biggest issues that critics of the system have had. We believe that our suggestions, combined with good timing (technology has advanced!), could actually serve as a base for a feasible and new way of looking at modern democracy, which we believe is better and more optimized than the current representative democracy Finland has.

Liquid democracy combines elements of direct and representative democracy, allowing citizens to either vote on issues directly or delegate their vote to trusted individuals with relevant expertise. Key features of this approach include a dynamic voting system where delegated votes can be reassigned or withdrawn at any time, customizable voting options for specific issues, and a transparency mechanism that tracks delegate performance and accountability.

We did come up with it, but then we found out our idea already existed. We also solved a bunch of issues related to liquid democracy, which have previously stopped the system from going forward. The project proposes innovations like "the multiplier" to reduce populism by diminishing the weight of forwarded votes, and “multilayered votes” allow voters to specify conditions on their choices. We also made a simulation, linked in the demo section of the project submission, which you can try out yourself!

See a demo video on YouTube.

See the story on LinkedIn.

See the Junction 2024 submission.