Australian political party wants to use blockchain to hold Brexit referendum again

Rage Review : The core purpose of the establishment of blockchain startup The Flux Startup Pty Ltd. is to introduce blockchain into the referendum system, especially in countries like Australia where there is very serious government corruption and new technologies are needed to improve the democratic system. The company controls the new democratic party Flux and will use the new voting system to participate in the Australian federal election. The party currently hopes to use its democracy as a service platform for the second round of Brexit referendum to ensure that every vote is achieved in the form of political points. Although this approach has been questioned by some, its founder Kaye believes that it is possible to achieve and has the potential to highly optimize the democratic system.

Translation: Annie_Xu

Australia's Flux Party wants democracy to be like technology.

Based on the idea that a cryptocurrency-powered blockchain network can serve as an online voting platform, Flux Democrats hopes to lower the barriers to passing legislation and help governments keep up with this hyperconnected, fast-paced global environment.

Flux hopes that governments can adapt to changing circumstances and use blockchain technology to achieve their goals.

Max Kaye, co-founder of Flux Democrats, said that the crux of politics is that it is too rigid and inefficient. Those who climb to the top of politics will stay there and will do whatever it takes for their own benefit, regardless of the interests of the people.

Flux Democrats pointed out that this is especially the case in Australia, which is full of corruption and voters are extremely disappointed with those in power. Just like the two major parties in Australia oppose the federal anti-corruption commission, ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption).

The activities of the Flux Party are mostly about power reorganization and direct authorization, which is consistent with the goals of most cryptocurrency projects. But many times, it is easier said than done.

Cryptocurrency projects attempting similar initiatives are fraught with issues of government regulation, which often ignores differences in people’s education and sentiment and gives everyone the same say.

Max Kaye

For example, Bitcoin enthusiasts still cannot agree on the finer points of the protocol, such as the size of transaction blocks. And since The DAO was attacked, the Ethereum community hopes to recover funds through technical adjustments. Some people think that this will give the Ethereum team too much power; even worse, the system lacks effective and inclusive management, resulting in an inability to make decisions.

But Kaye and co-founder Nathan Spataro did a lot of thinking and finally came up with a new solution.

Kaye believes the system could work like this: if a lot of voters decide to vote against the death penalty, just because they initially thought it would not pass, but it eventually passes, a new vote could be held the next day. But because Australia is so opposed to the death penalty, people would choose to oppose abolishing it.

Stop Brexit

It is considered an extremely active system, and British citizens had hoped that they could have such a system. After the Brexit referendum, the uncertainty about the direction of the British economy has led to Brexit supporters changing their minds.

Kaye said Flux’s democracy-as-a-service platform, in which each voter earns tokens associated with an issue and can vote against or for it, is resistant to corruption.

These tokens, called political points, can be sold to others if voters abstain from voting and can be used to propose voting items.

"We try to separate the monetary economy from the voting economy."

Flux Party adds opportunity cost to this process, preventing people from voting recklessly on issues they are not familiar with or do not care about. Because users earn political points by voting, people have a positive incentive to vote correctly.

This is similar to an auction, where individuals can bid on unused tokens. Political points can be generated at any time, and users can earn them fairly. To prevent speculation, tokens cannot be exchanged for real value, such as legal currency. It also prevents election training or vote buying. This is prohibited in many countries and despised by most other countries.

"We've done everything we can to ensure that this program is fair and that everyone has a say. It's like capitalism, where a minimum wage must exist alongside income tax."

Vote for idealism

The Flux Party's current goal is to win a Senate seat in the Tasmanian election on July 2. Kaye said this is not very difficult in Australia because 14,000 votes are enough to get elected.

Although Flux is a minority party with just 3048 members, it has a high profile in Australia and Kaye said the party would start a $25,000 social media campaign this week.

This year, Flux will field representatives for the midweek elections and parliamentary elections. The candidates are volunteers (including Kaye and Spataro), but voters will not be informed of the details.

Instead, the proportion of delegate votes will correspond to the votes cast by voters on the Flux platform; for example, if 50% of voters vote in favor of a bill and the other 50% vote against it, then the three Flux delegates will vote for and against it respectively.

In order to ensure the decentralization of the Flux platform, all votes will be anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain. They believe that this decision will prevent Kaye and the Flux Startup (The Flux Startup Pty Ltd.) from controlling voter data.

The startup will use an off-chain distributed hash table, corresponding to one hash value in a bitcoin transaction, to represent 100,000 votes.

Although this sounds esoteric, and many reports that the Flux Party is ridiculous, running on a platform of parliamentary reform rather than a traditional platform of jobs and development, is quite idealistic; but Kaye believes this is more realistic than overly optimistic about a so-called equal future.

"If we are right, it will lead to a democracy that is ten times better than it is now."

"It's worth a gamble."