Digital for the People
Can technology help save our democracy?
Now over a week has passed since the launch of the Digital Democracy Commission’s ‘Open Up!’ report my analysis might seem slightly belated, but I wanted to get a feel for other reactions before writing my own.
Before the launch of the report I made a video discussing some of the issues that young people wanted to change in order to help them get more involved with the political world. If you watch the video you can see that a lot of the areas have been covered; some quite comprehensively.
The one recommendation from the report that seems to divide opinion is the one on online voting. Many people are still worried about internet security and an increase in voter fraud, and while I share these concerns I definitely think the time has come for some wide scale trials to see if these concerns are justified.
The aims of making it easier to find out what is going on in Parliament and facilitating online participation in parliamentary debates are a fantastic step in the right direction, but the real silver bullet of democratic participation will be the report’s recommendations on improving political education. Making sure people know what MPs and Parliament do should be the least that is required of a functioning democracy.
The report is quite radical in a sense. Opening up our traditional democracy and methods of representation to the digital age is a worthy goal, but I think far more comprehensive and hollistic reform is needed for a truely Digital Democracy to take hold.
Long gone is the notion that young people aren’t interested in politics, and instead politicians are having to come to terms with the fact that they aren’t blameless in the descending spiral of traditional political disengagement.
Democracy for now
Is the current state of our Parliament fit for the 21st century?
I have long thought that the constituency system leaves a lot of young people feeling lost and alienated right from the off. In the past the main forum for community was the market, the town hall, etc. — It was a geographic place within a constituency where people met and engaged with others to their mutual benefit and it seemed proper and right that this interconnected community of people should elect a representative to be their champion.
Now, particularly for young people, their communities are not local in the geographic sense, but are communities in a demographic sense. The internet has opened up so many opportunities for communications online, but our democracy hasn’t kept up.
If someone feels that their community is spread across the country, sharing ideas, campaigning on issues — because young people are as issue conscious as ever — then it seems an anathema that they should be lumped together with the people down the road who they might not know beyond a surname.
Other people might feel very different about this, and I am not suggesting a complete overhaul of our democracy in the next five years, but I am glad it has been recognised, by politicians and the public, that reform is needed and something has to change.
Polls continually show that young people want significantly different things than other age groups. Under 25s are far more likely to support the Green Party than the over 60s, and far less likely to support UKIP than the over 60s.
If younger people don’t vote they won’t get what they want, and that would be a shame.
Read the report for yourself: Open Up! — Digital Democracy Commission
photos: flickr/Coventry City Council & flickr/SUXSIEQ
