You make hundreds of decisions every day, but in our current democratic system, the decisions that impact your life most are often made by someone else, without consulting you. Don't you deserve to have a say in what your government does more than once every four years?
Global Attitudes show that people are becoming less and less satisfied with democracy. Voting rates are dropping, people feel disillusioned, and polarization is getting worse. In addition to this, Covid-19 has made communicating with the public all the more challenging, limiting traditional, in person engagement methods like open houses and town halls.
Even in the best circumstances when passionate, driven elected officials and public servants engage their communities, surveys and other traditional methods can be exclusionary and problematic. Ultimately, due to lack of time, resources, or interest, the public by and large doesn’t get brought into big policy decisions.
As a global community, we find ourselves increasingly polarized. It's more and more common to engage in angry debates on social media with people we may once have considered friends. We drift further and further from not just civil conversations, but from fundamentally understanding each other.
We at eDemocracy Solutions believe that democracy when done right has the power to unite us, empower us, and change the world for the better - but it’s definitely not there just yet. We’re creating the eDemocracy Network to help envision a more equitable, inclusive, and fair approach to civic engagement.
That’s why we are starting the eDemocracy Network.
The eDemocracy Network will create a space for people across the country to connect with, participate in and organize for fair and empowering online consultations. It will use Ethelo’s unique technology to support important and timely issues of social, economic and environmental concern. The overall aim will be to empower people at the local level to play a more meaningful role in decision making and to provide a model for how democracy can evolve to be less polarizing, more inclusive and more focused on the details of decisions as opposed to politicians and political parties.
Our hope is that members feel inspired and excited by having a taste of how much better our democracy could be. We want them to be able to look forward to participating in engagement processes locally and nationally and have a sense that their input and opinions are valuable. We'll be looking to provide opportunities for members to learn about important issues in a unique, hands-on way as they weigh trade offs and explore solutions.
But what is an eDemocracy Network without, well, democracy?
Starting on December 1st, we are launching a public engagement process across Canada asking people to share how they feel about the current state of our democracy. This will provide a reflection of how people feel about democracy. It will feed into the development of the Network and build a truly engaged and member-led Network. This process will be facilitated by the Ethelo platform which allows for weighing of trade offs and seeks the least polarizing solutions to complex problems.
Click here to have your voice heard.
In the long run, our goal for the Network is that it will help us all understand differing points of view, provide a safe space for meaningful dialogue, and help community members organize fair and empowering online and offline public engagements on important issues.
Is democracy broken? What do you think? Where is democracy working for you and where is it failing? How could it be improved?. How does the current state of democracy make you feel?
We want your thoughts on what a movement for fixing and expanding our democracy should look like - will you take a few minutes to share your thoughts and ideas?
Your ideas, your neighbours’ ideas, your communities’ ideas on how to solve society’s complex problems are invaluable and can help build a better, more equitable and more engaged society. It’s time for this under-used resource to be harnessed. The eDemocracy Network will help make this happen and together we can chart a path forward that works for everyone.