Organisation and Procedures
Before we can adequately create a version control system to support a theoretical government, we must first create a government for the system to support. So let’s define our government organisation and the procedures involved.
As this project is mainly technical and a social endeavour I shall do my best to keep the procedures as simple as possible while still serving as a relatively analogous abstract of political reality.
House Organisation and Procedures
Organisation
The main voting block (which I shall refer to as “the House” from now on) will be made up of every member who has signed up to the site (analogous to being elected in a real government).
A site user will be referred to as an MH (Member of the House)
Political parties will be able to be founded and accumulate a membership of MHs. Apart from organisational clarity and certain site functions (For example, Party specific communication perhaps), these parties will have no particular impact on the mechanism of creating legislation.
Procedures
Voting
All votes will pass or fail based on a simple majority of 50% + one vote.
Due to the fact that the number of users will (hopefully) increase a relative quorum will need to be established. Ideally a quorum should be 50% +1 of the active members of the site. I will define “active” as having logged in since the last House vote or a fixed period, this needs to be decided.
Committee Organisation
Organisation
Any MH is allowed to join as many committees as he likes. Each committee will have an area of focus (Commercial Law, Criminal Law etc.) and a repository with the committees updated laws that haven’t yet been merged into the official codes of law.
A committee may have a chairman of a group of users with certain extra privileges and powers (Both technical and social) within the committee. These users will be chosen / elected from the general userbase.
Procedures
Voting
All votes will pass or fail based on a simple majority of 50% + one vote of committee members.
Due to the fact that the number of users will (hopefully) increase a relative quorum will need to be established. Ideally a quorum should be 50% +1 of the active committee members of the site using the same criteria as the main house votes.
MH Office Organisation
In reality politicians do not work in isolation, depending on the country politicians can have entire offices of staff members to aid them. While the details vary we cannot ignore the fact that this is something we will have to model.
Therefore it should be possible for MHs to create sub-users to represent staff. These logins should have almost all the same powers as the main MH user with the exception that only the main MH user account should be able to vote and make requests for their changes to be merged into the committee repository (More on this later).
This is not a priority for implementation but it should be born in mind and catered to in the design
