Turning ideas into working infrastructure
Verify’s principal current project is Vote4Democracy, building on the earlier development of VoteWrap and related experiments.
Vote4Democracy
Civic infrastructure for continuous democratic participation.
Vote4Democracy is being developed so people can participate continuously in democratic decisions rather than restricting meaningful participation largely to election periods.
The first public-facing work focuses on legislation currently before the Australian Parliament. People can browse bills without registering, understand what Parliament is considering and indicate which matters are important to them.
Those who want greater involvement can register for updates, participate in discussions and Community Catchups, contribute knowledge and research, vote directly, or choose someone they trust to represent them.
Vote4Democracy is also beginning to incorporate issues that arise outside the parliamentary bill process. These may include local community concerns, state or federal policy matters, proposals, existing laws or emerging issues that people believe require attention.
Over time, the intention is to incorporate state and local legislation and other democratic activity so that people do not have to navigate a collection of disconnected systems simply to participate in decisions that affect them.
The longer-term system is intended to support different forms of democratic representation, allowing people to participate directly when they wish while delegating authority when they do not have the time, knowledge or interest to deal with every issue themselves. The authority given to representatives is intended to remain democratic and withdrawable.
VoteWrap
VoteWrap is the underlying approach to collective decision-making that preceded Anthem Australia and the current Vote4Democracy Project.
It arose from the observation that conventional voting often reduces complex community opinion to a simple contest between winners and losers.
VoteWrap explores ways of preserving more information about what people actually think and enabling representation to reflect the range and strength of views within a community.
Its first implementation was a paper-based process within a community environmental organisation. Anthem Australia was later established as a vehicle for developing VoteWrap and exploring its practical application on a larger scale.
The concept has continued to evolve through multiple prototypes over many years and now forms part of the broader democratic architecture being developed through Vote4Democracy.
Parliamentary information
One of the immediate areas of work is improving public access to information about legislation before the Australian Parliament.
Vote4Democracy is developing systems that can obtain authoritative parliamentary information, organise it, present it clearly and help people follow bills as they move through Parliament.
The aim is not to replace Parliament’s own information. The aim is to make authoritative information easier for ordinary people to discover, understand and use as part of ongoing democratic participation.
Verify is therefore exploring appropriate technical access to public parliamentary information, including opportunities to work constructively with the Department of Parliamentary Services and other relevant institutions.
As Vote4Democracy develops, the same approach can be extended to state and local legislation and other authoritative government information.
Principles guiding the work
Start with real decisions
Real legislation, real community issues and real decisions.
Participation should be voluntary
Five minutes can matter, and so can sustained expertise.
Representation stays connected
Authority should be deliberately granted, changed or withdrawn.
Build locally, connect broadly
Local participation linked to council, state and national processes.
Bring democratic activity together
A common civic infrastructure instead of disconnected systems.
Technology is a means
The objective is better participation, not simply another app.