Ok, here's some more developed ideas for the functionality of such a system...
Users should have to register an account with an email address, to avoid people spamming with votes. Having their email addresses in the system could also help with optional email updates of what is happening in the thread. You could probably make these updates desirable with user-customized charts that display the trend of that proposition in the previous week or so. Having a user account also means that users could be reached by other members, allowing people to share ideas and potentially vote differently after debate.
Without question, spamming, and attempts to hack or rig the system would take place, but the moderators (or whoever is at the end of the day paying the bandwidth bills) would have to do their best to keep the system running smoothly. I would be interested in knowing what strategies reddit, Wikipedia , etc. use to minimize hacks, system rigging, trolls, etc.
A fascinating system of organization and metric analysis tools could be integrated, and extremely easy to use. You could see just what propositions the most people voted yes on, or just the ones that the most people voted no on, or a combination of the two, or where people are who voted against it, or what religion or self-described race or age or height or weight etc etc etc. These metrics could be integrated into appealing maps, charts and graphics.
Also, I have to point out that while Facebook only lets you Like stuff, a democratic legislation proposal system would have to let you vote Yes or No (For or Against) or No Vote, just as you would if you were a member of Congress. This means that we might OWS supporters/sympathizers have to open up our ideas to a public consensus gathering system, and possibly find that we are actually in the minority on certain propositions. That doesn't mean we shouldn't participate just as enthusiastically on the behalf of the 99% (technically, the 100%, anyone can vote in the system). I just think we shouldn't encourage popularizing a forum for civic engagement: where people of all ages and languages can engage in meaningful discussions and feel their voice is being heard more democratically than they are used to.
There's other interesting possibilities too. Maybe you could have some metric system that rates users online credibility as voted on by other members, so those users would have a more heavily weighted vote on a different chart of data. Like, what do the most civic-ly engaged people say should be done about this proposition? This could cause problems though so I mention it only as a possibility.
You could read a user's profile and see (if they choose to share it) how they voted on different issues, and you could try to reach out to them and see if they could be persuaded otherwise. This system could also make it easy to see how the way you vote matches up with famous users or persons in power that choose to participate. (I bet Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul would participate.) Imagine that, you could have your profile show you immediately how many points of agreement and disagreement you have with some real political leader. Or Snooki.
Let's take it further, the actual propositions that are trying to be pushed through Washington should be on there for the global community to vote for or against or not at all. Every politician should be urged to participate. It'd make it real easy to see who has been voting with you and who has been voting against you.
I think a functionality that shows how politicians vote on different issues would be the most exciting feature of this system. You should be able to have your profile collect all your different votes, for or against or indifferent, and then click on a politician, and see how they voted on that particular legislation. For example, you might find that Barrack Obama voted just like you 56% of the time and Rick Perry 37% of the time, and then see exactly what propositions they agreed and disagreed with you on.
Doesn't it suck when you go to the voting booth, and you see a zillion names and you have no idea what they really stand for? All of us want to vote for the person who would most vote like ourselves if we were in office. Wouldn't it be cool to have an app we trusted on our phones that would quickly and easily show us which politicians in this election have voted the most like you in the past, and claim they will vote the most like you in the future? Cut through the rhetoric. Cut through the commercials. Just get the facts: does this politician's votes represent mine or not?
At the end of the day, the system needs to be intuitively easy to use, minimally embellished, but have room for vast sophistication. When you click on a proposition, it should open a thread of dialogue and/or a forum on that proposition. To keep people interested and to the point, these discussions should probably be aggregated in a reddit style as well, so people can find what viewpoints have garnered the most interest or debate recently and historically, so they can get the most pith out of their debate participation. There's no reason why this program can't have a fun Facebook side of it.
There could of course be no advertising, and everything would have to come through donations. There would be a donate now button, but nothing else. No-one keeping the platform running can ever be paid for doing so. All money given to the organization would be spent on keeping the servers running. Any civic engagement site whose operators directly make money from the site should be shame shame shamed out of existence.
I think Occupy Wall Street should align with the development of one (or many, like a Facebook, I think one would just rise to the top) of these systems, to boost civic engagement by the disenfranchised 99% of the world, who can't walk in to Congress and cast a vote, who can't impeach their political leader, who in their busy lives can't remember the details of all the times they've been helped or screwed over by those voting on their behalf.
If something like I'm describing already exists, then great! I think members of the OWS movement should try to attract attention to these platforms for civic engagement. There are people all over the world who would like to be with OWS on the street in NYC or any other major protest, but they just physically can't be there. We have electricity and internet, they don't need to be there! Sure there are people who can't participate because they don't have E & I, but all the more reason to design this online civic engagement system, and vote for the proposition to declare E & I a basic human necessity in the 21st century ; )
Thanks for reading, I'd like to hear what anyone thinks for or against, or take suggestions.
Peace!
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