Wicracy Total Democracy What Is Wicracy? Wicracy is a technological system for use by political parties. The wicracy system allows all individual party members--i.e., the voters themselves, not a small set of elite party "insiders"--to write, debate and ratify their party's political platform. This user-generated platform is built and modified in real-time and is constantly changing in light of up-to-the-moment changes in the voters' positions on specific issues. The term "wicracy" is a portmanteau of the word "wiki" and the ending "-cracy" in reference to user-generated content sites, such as Wikipedia, and political systems, particularly, democracy. How Does Wicracy Work? Wicracy users first propose "planks"--i.e., one-line policy statements on particular issues--to be included in their party’s platform. Once a plank has been proposed, other users can review and debate the merits of the plank. Users can also take a position--yes or no--on whether the given plank should be included in the official platform of their party. When enough users have taken a position on a given plank, a quorum is reached. Once a quorum has been reached, if a plan has a high enough percentage of "yes" positions, the plank is ratified and becomes adopted as part of the party’s political platform on Wicracy.org. What Are Some of the Benefits of Wicracy? The benefits of a user-controlled political platform are numerous, including: Unprecedented empowerment of voters. In terms of total individual empowerment, wicracy raises democracy to a level that has no precedent in American politics. Just as Wikipedia has rendered traditional encyclopedias obsolete and Facebook has rendered traditional facebooks obsolete, wicracy renders traditional political party structure obsolete. Instantaneous accountability--down to the decimal point. One of the most powerful, unprecedented features made possible by the wicracy model is called the "representativeness indicator." By allowing party views to be broken down issue-by-issue and the strength of these views to be measured with precision, the degree to which a given political candidate represents the views of his or her party can be quantified more accurately and precisely--down to the decimal point--than ever thought possible. Collective intelligence. One concept that has captured the public eye recently is that of the power of the group (lately being called "crowdsourcing"). Wicracy taps this power at a depth that no political party has previously even approached, drawing upon the combined information and experience of potentially millions of users, not just a handful the view of a handful of elite politicians and lobbyists. Coalition-building. In its full-function form, wicracy allows formation of intra-party coalitions so as to further enhance the power of the voter-control model. "We are using the catch phrase ‘Total Democracy’ . . . [because] that is really what wicracy provides: a truly empowered electorate," explained Nicole Theiss, quality assurance lead for the Wicracy demonstration project of 2006. For more information on that project, see the Wicracy White Paper and Technical Disclosure Bulletin. Intellectual Property Portions of the Wicracy system are disclosed in the Wicracy patent application as well as the Lexary patent. Early Publicity A demonstration prototype (available online temporarily in 2006) made national news, including an article in eWeek and inclusion in "Super Sites" at Politics Online. Where Can I Use Wicracy? Only one party is currently set to offer wicracy to party members, The Humane Party. Voters who wish to participate in this cutting edge political process are encouraged to join The Humane Party and begin making their views official. Copyright © 1999-present. All rights reserved.