Talk:E-democracy/DebateDecide

DebateDecide is a website for supporting Electronic Direct Democracy in Organizations. While several EDD systems are under development, this seems to have been the first started project (April 2003 for the launch of the prototype system) and the first project to be accomplished and to run (full feature launch in December 2008).

On DebateDecode you can search or create a virtual constituent assembly associated with a democratic organization (for example: your country, city, neighborhood, church). The participation in a constituent assembly is controlled by its creator or by its members, so that only constituents can vote, formulate petitions and justifications. Votes are registered using digital signatures, so that they can be verified by third parties and used in parallel democratic/decision processes.

History and description
DebateDecide started in April 2003 as an attempt by expatriated citizens to participate in the petition signature gathering process of their country. The project has no comercial intent and its development was proposed as a research topic to US NSF and to the European Union. While it never materialized as an NSF project, the site was eventually completed on a volunteer base in 2008.

Technology for supporting EDD has been researched and developed at the Florida Institute of Technology and published at the Digital Government Conference (dg.o) 2005. The technology is currently used with student organizations at Florida Tech.

Technology
The system uses digital certificates instead of passwords. Unlike passwords, certificates cannot be stolen from a compromised web server. Still, you have to keep safe your own computer, where you save the secret key. Certificates are standard tools for verifying digital signatures. With certificates, a server cannot claim that you voted or said something that you did not. They prove the legitimity of the organization members. Debate...Decide! helps you to get a certificate for your organization, if you do not already have one.