notes-groupDecisionMaking-fluidDemocracy-introStructure

Introduction to the structure of Fluid Democracy

Fluid Democracy is a governance system, that is to say, it is a blueprint for a set of roles, and rules for how those roles interact, that allow a group to efficiently make decisions. It is in the same space as the U.S. Constitution, or the Bylaws for a corporation, and in fact it is formalized as a set of Bylaws that may be used by groups. It is intended for use in groups of any type and any size, from small to large, from informal open projects to corporations to governments.

Terminology

We call a group within the group, like a committee, a "body". The whole group is also called a body when acting according to certain rules.

We will call a proposal that is accepted by the group an "Act".

When multiple bodies must agree in order for a proposal to become an Act, then a proposal which one body has accepted is called a Resolution (a Resolution may or may not become an Act, depending on what the other bodies decide).

On voting

Some groups may want to give each member an equal vote, but others may want to give some members more votes than others. Fluid Democracy works for both of these cases. My recommendation is that groups which are completely optional and voluntary (such as open projects) use unequal votes. The reason is that often some people in such groups are thought to be more knowledgable, and more involved with the project, than others; better decisions may result if those people have more power. If you are going to give some people more voting power than others, I recommend that you use the PieTrust system for deciding how much voting power to give each member.

Voting is done using a simple system called "Score Voting". Score Voting is superior to plurality voting because there is no spoiler effect and because compromise candidates have a better chance of winning. For multi-seat elections, Reweighted Score Voting