A "Citizen's Convention Year" once every 10 years

General
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In the thread “How the creation of LL should be happening” we discussed the idea of a constitutional convention that happens once every 10 years and incorporates ideas from any citizen being voted on in local, regional, and country-wide rounds of voting.

Now I am thinking that it should be a whole year of a “Citizen’s Convention”. All the voting can be pushed into the 3 month voting periods (standard in LL). The more ideas are put forth, then the more once-every-3-month voting periods are used. This also allows for the submission of large ideas of many pages of writing (just like current day politicians have to read thru), because there are many months under which the idea is being considered by the populace and so they can read thru the ideas at their leisure.

Let’s say the deadline for citizen idea submissions is December 15th 2029, then the local citizen ideas are put out to be voted on by small groups in the winter 2030 election. If an idea to completely re-write the police system is passed through a local group of voters in the winter 2030 election (1st round of Citizen’s Convention Year), then that same police system idea goes into large group voting in the spring 2030 election. If it passes that, it goes to regional group voting in the summer 2030 election. Then, if it passes that, it can go into the final round of a full-country all-citizen vote. If it passes the final vote, the head of police must enact the transformation from the old police system into the new police system.

As I envision it, this spreading out of the votes by 3 months ensures that people can become very well informed about the ideas that pass thru the local group round. The local group vote does not need prior exposure to the idea, because they are just voting if something sounds good at that moment. When the idea passes that first round, then citizens can really examine those ideas hard for three months. Any ideas that pass through 2 rounds of voting should probably be on the radar of all citizens and by the 3rd vote (6 months into the process) all citizens should have read the idea and formed some of their own thoughts on it and have had discussions with friends/family/neighbors about the idea.

The first voting round (local) can pass an idea with 51% of voter approval. Then the % increases until the final (all citizens) round of voting where 67% of voters are needed to pass the idea into creation. Maybe the final % should be even higher, more like 70% or 75% of voters, I’m not sure yet.

This process really seems like it would force the introspection and debate needed for an idea to really be understood by the populace. I see things passed into law across the world and the average guy on the street probably doesn’t even know about the new law, and if he has heard of it, he probably only knows the media’s propaganda story about it. Would this new process help to fix this, what do you think?

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This is exactly why I like the direct democratic approach here because it forces the citizenry to know what the laws are and more importantly if those laws are acceptable for their country in this case. The biggest hurdle is to engage enough of the citizens to be truly active this varies greatly from country to country and I don’t know have the official numbers on Liberland (if Liberland even keeps such records) but no matter how you look at it though if a controversial or a scandalous law were ever to be introduced I imagine it going “viral” in the effect that people will notice and take action against it. Will enough people rise up and say no?, that is an answer I do not have but I will say though that my news blog would cover the law though no matter what.

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Yeah I totally agree. I think LL will only be an inspiration to the world if they are the first to start a direct democracy. They have to start off as a direct democracy, because it will be incredibly difficult to transition to one later on. No politicians want to give up power, as we have seen with their refusal to publicly dismiss the “Senate" idea. I don’t trust any of them to do a slow transition into a direct democracy. It has to be provisional govt —> straight into direct democracy.

What are your thoughts on spreading the idea across multiple vote cycles and many months? I like it because it forces the govt to move slow and there can’t be any “fly-by-night” passage of laws that no one in the public is even aware of. I’m trying to think how we can incorporate this method into non-convention years.

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Direct Democracy in non-convention periods

I like the idea of having multiple votes separated by some time so much that I am thinking of having 2 part votes on a normal basis during the 9 year “non-convention” years. It doesn’t seem useful to do for elected positions, such as the head police investigator (there’s nothing to think-tank on), but for ideas, they just need more time for people to think-tank all the potential outcomes. So I’m thinking any proposed laws in “non-convention” years (even though the law will sunset at the next citizen’s convention’s outcome) should go thru 2 vote cycles.

The first round will incorporate ideas from any citizen voted on in smaller groups. If it passes that, in 3 months, it is voted on by everyone. Then, if it passes, it becomes a “trial” law that sunsets after the Citizen’s Convention.

If there are too many potential laws submitted, perhaps there should be an opening time for submissions and then the first 50 (maybe) are the ones that go thru to be voted on (small groups).