IserveU is a non-profit, direct democracy organization and web-based voting platform founded in

Yellowknife Yellowknife (; Dogrib: ) is the capital, largest community, and only city in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It is on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, about south of the Arctic Circle, on the west side of Yellowknife Bay near the ...

Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories (abbreviated ''NT'' or ''NWT''; french: Territoires du Nord-Ouest, formerly ''North-Western Territory'' and ''North-West Territories'' and namely shortened as ''Northwest Territory'') is a federal territory of Canada. ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

. It is currently the only system in the world with an elected representative in office. The organization strives to increase citizen engagement, transparency and accountability in government through

crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...

decision-making to the voting public of Yellowknife.

Formation

Initially conceived of in 2012 by Paige Saunders it was intended to introduce a form of

e-democracy E-democracy (a combination of the words electronic and democracy), also known as digital democracy or Internet democracy, is the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in political and governance processes. The term is be ...

to Yellowknife, IserveU has since become a fully fledged web-based voting platform and volunteer driven organization, orchestrating public events and

canvassing Canvassing is the systematic initiation of direct contact with individuals, commonly used during political campaigns. Canvassing can be done for many reasons: political campaigning, grassroots fundraising, community awareness, membership dri ...

. In a letter from one of the organization's founding members, it is stated that prior to the election, IserveU operated through volunteers and a small staff.

Voting platform

The IserveU voting platform functions as a way to incorporate elements of direct democracy into a representative system, by obligating city council incumbents to vote in accordance with the outcome of online votes – effectively creating a way for the public to directly decide the fate of their city. Councillors seeking greater citizen input into decision making post all current motions before the council, on the IserveU site. These motions could be detailed, debated and voted on by the registered userbase before the outcome is taken to council. Councillors themselves can vote on issues with the

weight In science and engineering, the weight of an object is the force acting on the object due to gravity. Some standard textbooks define weight as a vector quantity, the gravitational force acting on the object. Others define weight as a scalar q ...

of the currently 'uncast' votes. That is, the outcome of a motion that has very little public participation will largely be decided by the votes of the councillors, as the votes in the uncast vote pool are equally divided between them. Whereas, a motion that has garnered a large amount of public participation will have a reduced number of uncast votes for the councillors to use, reducing the councillors' impact. The system is still being modified to meet new concerns, and has been released under an

open source license An open-source license is a type of license for computer software and other products that allows the source code, blueprint or design to be used, modified and/or shared under defined terms and conditions. This allows end users and commercial compa ...

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, to allow even greater public scrutiny and control.

Inauguration

On the 19th of October, 2015, Rommel Silverio was elected into council, making Yellowknife the official debut of the IserveU e-democracy platform. He will enter office for a three-year term starting on November 2, 2015.

References

{{reflist Organizations based in the Northwest Territories Yellowknife E-democracy