A failure or success?

In the middle of the summer 2002 we met at my house to plan the election campaign. I had arranged black t-shirts with our modernist red-black-white logo printed on the chest. We put the t-shirts on and felt the radical potential.

The wish to change the political system gave us energy to do a lot of voluntary work. It wouldn’t be easy to get people to vote for a party without promises, but on the other hand Vallentuna was not so great. To convince two hundred people might be enough. We decided to borrow a camping car and travel around with a mobile campaign.

Two days after our meeting the largest morning newspaper in the country Dagens Nyheter, had an article on Demoex at the editorial page. The article obtained us as radical visionaries, but it also showed that we did not want to make a revolution, but only had a very great faith in democracy.

We felt like a bunch of hippies. The last weekend before the election day, we went around with the camping car, singing songs and handing out leaflets. We wrapped the van in a large black velvet cloth and attached a homemade sign at one side with tape and safety pins only. Traffic Safety Administration would have disapproved the decor. On a straight road the sign flew off, but fortunately the motorcyclist after us swerved and thus avoided a disaster.

After handing out the last flyers on the election day we met up in Vallentuna Theater. We followed the counting of votes on TV, and sent a courier in a regular interval for the Municipal Hall across the square to check out the latest result. After a couple of constituencies it looked nice, but when ten out of twelve were counted, we did not seem to get into. At last the tension became unbearable and we all ran over to the Municipal Hall.

The local newspaper reporter stood with a camera around his neck. He said that we needed ninety more votes to enter. At the very same moment the municipal secretary came out with the result from the last ward. Bad news. We got unexpectedly few votes from the largest district. The journalist said blankly “Then you did not enter”. After ten shocking seconds my cell phone rang. The national newspaper wanted a quick comment, they had read on the Internet that Demoex took a seat.

I do not remember what I said, I almost start to boil from inside when I recall the feeling. We ran out of the square, screaming like savages. The reporters picture of us ended up at the front of the local newspaper. I am the second person from right. My beloved students look happy and cheerful, but I seem gone completely.

To reach out with information that Demoex exists we used the old printing technology and made a cheap A4 brochure entitled “Demoex set up in the local elections.”

We explained that Demoex is a forum for direct democracy on the Internet where you can debate and vote on City Council issues. The core of Demoex is a website where you can vote, propose motions and to argue for or against various proposals.

The difference between ordinary parties and Demoex is that there is no party line. We represent members’ votes statistically. If the association has five seats and 60% voting in favor of a proposal, it will be three seats for the proposal.

We also wrote that many are skeptical of new ideas, but that Demoex is not really a new idea. It injects direct democracy to our current political system. The Athenian Assembly began with direct democracy 2400 years ago.

Representative democracy became a practical solution where long distances made it hard for people to meet. Now the distances have shrunk again thanks to the Internet, so direct democracy is again possible, we wrote.

My good friend Einar worked temporarily as a bicycle mail carrier. He rode around and put the brochure in 5000 local mailboxes. He did the greatest job and Demoex cannot thank him enough!

The base of an organization is the constitution, a text pointing out the basic ideas, setting the rules and limits. One interesting and important part of the constitution is about objects, purposes and activities. Most of the political parties have a statute that says that their aim is to win influence and recruit members. Demoex lacks this kind of purpose. Instead the main paragraph of Demoex is:

We want to give every citizen the right to represent himself in any political point of issue.

The purpose is:

• To increase people’s personal influence over political decisions.
• To promote greater interest in local politics
• To awaken and strengthen public opinion on this interest by politicians, government agencies, schools, businesses and others.

These are all non-partisan ideas, there is nothing about what to think. The Demoex Constitution also consist of standard paragraphs, ruled by the Swedish law of organization. They are about the annual meeting, the routines and so on. One interesting thing – to start an organization the law forces you to build in a hierarchy with a top-level (president), a second level (board) and at least one sublevel. We made the  hierarchy as weak and small as possibly in order to avoid the iron law of oligarchy.

The failure of Demoex depends on the constitution. A bad constitution stand on unsustainable premises. People are selfish in common. Local democratic influence doesn’t seem to have enough appeal. What’s in it for me?

Demoex doesn’t ask anyone to adopt a specific policy, we ask people to think and vote for themselves. Our aim is not only to extend people’s rights, but to make better decisions. Collective decision-making presupposes plurality and divergence. A group of like-minded persons, fighting against opponents with different ideas, does not increase the collective intelligence.

Demoex direct democratic approach was something new in the political system the year 2002. New ideas calls for marketing strategies. In order to candidate in the local election we needed to devise a ballot paper. In Sweden, the political correctness is almost a law. Everybody loves democracy, but trying to extend the democracy further is rather suspicious and far from the political mainstream.

Even if it does not matter who is representing the Demoex voters – because the representative has no more power than anyone else – our ballot had to look both serious and appealing. The candidates alone had to show that direct democracy means a change into something new. At the same time the ballot paper had to look political correct. I disqualified myself on the ballot, because there were already enough of white, male, middle-age persons in the council.

Our first sharp voting in Demoex was the candidate ranking. At the top came Parisa Molagholi, one of the students involved from the beginning. Parisa’s young age (19) and whole appearance was a clear signal of change in policy. Parisa showed that the party was neither populistic or xenophobic, as detractors like to think otherwise.

Parisa and everyone else on the ballot had to sign a contract in which they pledged to add their voices to the statistically equivalent outcome of referendums on the Internet. This is the mechanism that makes it possible for citizens to take more part in politics than to vote only for a party every fourth year.

We began by trying to get the other parties sympathetic to Demoex. Naive as we were, we asked for a short meeting with their elected representatives at the City Council. Our goal was to present the project for them to make them interested in cooperating.

We came into their coffee break. A computer was rigged with a projector so we could show NetConference. We told the elected from other parties that we thought of implementing a democratic experiment in which we need politicians’ involvement. “We’ll make you stars,” we said. “You are the most knowledgeable about conditions in the municipality, so we want to give you the opportunity to express your opinions and discuss issues online. Then citizens can take part and vote. We believe it will increase interest in local politics and that you will gain respect and trust among citizens.”

They seemed sympathetic until we told that we were planning to fund the experiment by candidate in the local election. Then there was a noticeable change. Some laughter heard and an annoying hum. Then the counterarguments began to hail on us: Don´t you understand that this might be dangerous? How will you be able to take responsibility for your policy? What do you do if a bunch of racists join your experiment? Have you thought about security? How can you believe that it will work?

We went from being well received to blamed on just a few minutes. I remember how the Social Democrats’ party leader said that “it is exciting and interesting what you young people do, but why do you stand for election? This means that we must fight against you.”

After the meeting, we were shocked and upset. We did not expect us that warmhearted defenders of democracy and citizen power would take a strong position against our ideas and refuse to cooperate with us. A purified politician that I spoke with after the meeting said about his colleagues that “they are afraid of losing their little position in society, its status and its small fee.” Now, retrospectively, we understand that the knee-jerk criticism that we unleashed was inevitable.

Me and my students where really grassroots. We had the idea of how to develop the democratic system, but where would we start? We had no money and no organization behind us. Around the year 2000 there were a couple of E-democracy projects in Sweden, hosted by different companies. I contacted them, talked about the students’ ideas and asked what the service would cost? It would be far too expensive. Then I found a newly opened system called NetConference. The company’s CEO Mikael Nordfors lived in Stockholm.

I met dr Mikael Nordfors for the first time in January 2002. He is a great person, both in literal and figurative sense. He received me in his apartment, dominated by a giant grand piano and modern information technology. I told him what we wanted to do and Mikael saw the potential immediately.

Several years earlier he attempted to introduce telephone polls in politics. When computers evolved, he decided to form the company Vivarto and invest in developing a decision support systems. Back in the head Mikael Nordfors was carrying the idea of reforming the political system with the help of technology. In Demoex dr Nordfors saw a new opportunity. He believed in us, and when I walked away, he had already created an administrator account for me so that we could test NetConference.

We invited the public to a first constituent meeting for Demoex. We booked Vallentuna theater with 340 chairs, because we had no idea how many people would be interested. Only seventeen persons showed up, most students under 20 years. The atmosphere was curious and unsure. How would we manage this? I started the meeting a little hesitant, trying to seem moderate enthusiastic. I told about the background and showed a bad powerpoint. The silent question was how it would go to in practice?

Then Mikael Nordfors arrived to the meeting. He introduced himself, sat down at the computer and demonstrated the advanced functions of NetConference. Then he told us that we could use the system free of charge until the election in September. Applause! Now, there were no longer funding obstacles and thus no turning back. We felt compelled to make an attempt.