Voting Details
The Dreamers voting system is intended to show how ordinary people could propose, discuss, improve and vote directly on public policy.
The Basic Process
1. Initial Proposals
Anyone with an account can submit a new policy proposal. Other users can read the proposal, vote it up or down, and add supporting or opposing arguments.
2. Community Discussion
Comments are divided into supporting and opposing arguments. Those comments can also be voted up or down, helping the strongest arguments rise toward the top.
3. Official Voting
Proposals that gain enough support can be moved into Official Voting, where they would eventually be presented with factual summaries and the strongest arguments on both sides.
4. Adopted Policies
In the full version of the system, proposals approved through official voting would become Adopted Policies and help form a constantly evolving constitution.
Initial Proposals
The Initial Proposals section contains policy ideas submitted by users. Each proposal includes a title, category, description and discussion area.
Users can vote proposals up or down. The purpose is to help identify which ideas have enough public interest to deserve more serious review.
Beneath each proposal are two discussion columns: one for supporting arguments and one for opposing arguments. This allows the system to collect the strongest reasoning on both sides before a proposal moves forward.
This stage is meant to be open, exploratory and democratic. It is where ideas are introduced, challenged, refined and compared.
Official Voting
Official Voting is intended to be a more structured stage. In the current prototype, an administrator can move a proposal from Initial Proposals into Official Voting.
In a more complete version of the system, proposals would move into Official Voting only after meeting a clearly defined public-support threshold.
Each official proposal would ideally include:
- The full proposal text
- An AI-generated factual summary
- A summary of the strongest supporting arguments
- A summary of the strongest opposing arguments
- Clear voting options
- Transparent vote totals and outcomes
The goal is not merely direct democracy, but Informed Direct Democracy: a system where people can vote directly while also being encouraged to understand the issue before making a decision.
Thresholds and Future Rules
The exact thresholds for moving proposals forward are still experimental. The long-term idea is that different kinds of decisions may require different levels of approval.
- Ordinary policy proposals may require a simple majority.
- Removing officials may require a stronger majority.
- Changing constitutional principles may require an even higher threshold.
These rules are part of the larger experiment. The site is meant to explore how a fair and stable direct voting system might be designed.
Coming Features
- AI-assisted factual summaries
- AI-assisted summaries of supporting and opposing arguments
- Adopted Policies section
- Constantly Evolving Constitution section
- More advanced voter verification
- More complete moderation and administration tools