4. Empowering Communities
Page currently under construction. These are living documents, so are updated frequently.
4.1: Implement an initial voluntary trial, on per councillor basis, of the HandiVote system, and/or the decisioning method of Systemic Consensing (SK).
You can make your own decisions because you know what you & your local community need best. But how to practically do that?
More in depth information:
HandiVote: Simple, Anonymous, and Auditable Electronic Voting (Routledge).
Extending Handivote to Handle Digital Economic Decisions (ResearchGate).
HandiVote’s code (GitHub).
SK-Prinzip (Official site, Google Translated from German original).
A .pdf guide on SK (in German, but a rough translation can be had through Google Translate - Documents).
4.2: Grant expanded local autonomy, self-determination & agency, so you & your community can get small things done without the need to tediously go through the HCC.
Tired of waiting for a pothole to be fixed & know old mate down the road is a retired construction worker? Grass on the median strip more unruly than Obar on a long weekend? Why not plant some nice natives on it & a bee hotel?
This includes; allowing your neighbourhood to act immediately on its needs, also for renovations (excluding structural or mains water & power) see Homes 4 Hobartians 1.2.
4.3: Evolve the HCC into a Citizens’ Assembly model so locals are genuinely & proportionately reflected, & have control of the decision making reins.
This includes; moving beyond beleaguered electoral “representatives” (including myself), & towards proportional sortitioned (like we do with our juries currently) delegates.
The position of Mayor & Deputy Mayor would still be elected as currently.
It would also include; delegates are instantly recallable with 2/3 total local “vote of no confidence“ (readily done with pre-existing Government e-petitions), term limits of eight years consecutively &/or 16 years in total, real time digital disclosure of council/assembly related expenses (proactive transparency), etc.
4.4: How & in what areas these might be applied, please see Economic Democracy 3.1 & 3.2.
[practical example here]