Blockchain Democrats to participate in Australian federal election

Rage Review : The Flux Democratic Party, controlled by startup The Flux Startup Pty Ltd., will participate in the federal election in Australia next week. The unorthodox ideas of this new party have won it a lot of media coverage, and the particularity of Australia's electoral system and environment has created the same chance for all parties to win. The special thing about this party is that its core figure is a Bitcoin advocate who hopes to use a token to represent voting rights, and can trade tokens on the blockchain to transfer his voting rights. Its purpose is to change Australia's existing legislative process and even the constitution; use blockchain to help realize people's direct democracy.

Translation: Annie_Xu

A political party running in next week’s Australian election wants to give its members the power to vote and trade their political power using verifiable transactions on the bitcoin blockchain.

Flux’s election situation: Vote for blockchain

The democratic party is Flux, and 13 Senate (upper house of parliament) candidates will contest in the federal election on July 2, 2016.

Flux's highest vision is idealistic and ambitious; it is to completely eliminate the existing representative system of world democracy; to allow people to directly express their concerns about issues such as party legislation, including politicians.

The Flux website states:

"Our politics is MIA, DOA," comparing the existing government system to an old operating system that is already somewhat redundant.

The party has released statistics on its supporters, which currently number more than 3,100 in office, and its unorthodox ideas have earned it a lot of media coverage.

Part political party, part Bitcoin startup

Flux was founded in 2015 by technology entrepreneur Max Kaye, who was a member of the Bitcoin Association of Australia (BAA), Australia's leading bitcoin advocacy organization.

Kaye and current BAA president Adam Poulton are both candidates for Senate.

Poulton has also been promoting Bitcoin in his hometown of Launceston, Tasmania for a long time. He once took the lead in installing ATMs and persuading local businesses to accept Bitcoin.

Two candidates who participated in the local election also supported the government's acceptance of Bitcoin for tax payments.

Flux Democracy is controlled by a co-founder, The Flux Startup Pty Ltd., a software development company that raised A$270,000 ($202,200) in seed funding to eventually bring its system to market.

In May 2015, Flux announced the minimum viable product (MVP) of its voting system, and then invested in long-term party building and election activities.

What’s next for Flux?

To achieve the first phase of its grand plan, Flux needs to elect candidates to the Senate from among its existing members, with other democratic legislation, committees, or agencies as alternative targets.

After that, cutting-edge technology took the lead. Participants downloaded and registered the Flux app on their mobile phones. The verification process was not complicated, but only those who had the right to vote could register.

For issues that require voting, Flux allocates a one-time voting token to each user, which can be kept by themselves or used for trading with other users, because perhaps others are more concerned about these issues.

There are also liquidity tokens, which users can collect and spend on issues they care about or are good at. Kaye said these tokens are distributed in a way that is “somewhat similar to a general basic income” and are intended to be inflationary values ​​to prevent individuals from accumulating too much power over the long term.

System users have strict screening

Kaye said Flux only wanted political activists to vote so they wouldn't waste their time on "a lot of frivolous ideas".

Rather than requiring users to participate in every voting decision, they can choose to give up their tokens or transfer them to someone else. Bitcoin transactions record token votes and transfers, so they can be audited on the blockchain. Users can record transaction data directly without making it public, or communicate their decisions to Flux in a feasible way (such as IFS), which collects and uploads large transaction records.

Kaye said that Flux hopes that stakeholders will not only vote on major issues, but also participate in voting on changes to existing laws and procedural issues to improve the efficiency of existing politics. This will require the ability to easily transfer votes.

"In GitHub, if you want to fix something, you just submit a patch and install it; you don't have to rewrite all the software."

However, Flux hopes that in the future, a distributed voting system could completely replace the legislature, eliminating the need for any staffing.

“This is only the first step in the complete elimination of the representative legislative process, with the ultimate goal of changing the Constitution.”

Kaye said giving people the vote so they could participate in political decision-making and replacing parliaments, majority members, staff and bureaucracy could save a country like Australia $2 billion a year.

Countries can use systems like Flux to outsource the legislative process and pay for "democracy as a service" for the country, using funds to promote development while allowing users to obtain legal services 100% free of charge.

Opportunities for success

To win a seat in the Australian Senate, a 11% support rate is required. Due to the peculiarities of the Senate's proportional representation and voting system, and the fact that the entire Senate is required to participate in the election, the parties have a higher chance of winning.

The balance of power between the two major parties is often held by a minority or independent party, or sometimes even one or two people. If that perfect political storm were to occur, Flux would be useful.

Similar initiatives

While the Flux blockchain and vote-trading method are unique, it is not the first institution to attempt direct democracy.

Senator Online, now called Online Direct Democracy, contested the 2007 and 2013 Australian elections but received just 0.06 per cent of the national vote. It will contest again this year.

There is also Argentina's Partido de la Red (Net Party), which won 1% of the support in the 2013 local elections in Buenos Aires.

Max Kaye

Kaye pointed out that direct democracy, like cryptocurrency, is not new, but the technology to achieve these goals is still under development. Flux hopes to promote this goal with its vote trading system.

“Direct democracy gives power to the people, not to any one individual. That’s what Flux aims to do.”