Imagine if voting was more representative of what people really wanted? That‘s exactly what is happening in Argentina thanks to these digital tools for citizen participation.

Through interactive online platform democraciaOS, Agustin Frizzera is destroying barriers between politicians and people around the world – and reimagining democracy in the Internet era with the world’s largest open source online voting effort.

As a collective project with no ‘creators’, but a lot of collaborators, democraciaOS brings citizens together with elected representatives by translating new political proposals into everyday language, and encouraging participation, two-way conversation and public involvement.

The technology helps tap into the collective intelligence of the community to make the best decisions possible and further improve citizens’ quality of life. The shared vision is to craft bridges to allow citizen impact on politics.

The hacktivists behind it demonstrated this in action by founding their own political party in Buenos Aires. In 2013 their Partido de la Red (Net Party) was an example of exploiting the internet as a democratic tool. They posted all laws being debated, alongside pros and cons, and encouraged the public to vote. Their manifesto promises that, if elected, members will vote exactly as their user base decides online.

DemocraciaOS is now the world’s largest open source digital platform for consultation, dialogue and debate between a government and its community. It is now being used in Argentina as the official government-backed platform for national public consultation, as well as being used by many different institutions and political activists the world over.

Currently being used at municipal and federal levels in Mexico, Spain, Tunisia and in a few US states, the vision is for parties to adopt this true collaborative decision-making worldwide, giving everyone the right to be informed, debate and vote. That’s cyber-democracy.

AtlasAction: Learn more about Democracia en Red, a civil society organisation based in Argentina composed of activists, developers and social scientists with the objective of opening public institutions and giving access to decision-making spaces.