What are the issues relating to democracy that needs public traction?

Hi All Members of Designing Open Democracy!

After the last gathering where we discussed about the kind of organisational structure we should have. We prompted everyone to contribute a few issues relating to democracy that they feel are inadequately addressed in the wider public. Areas that our democratic development community can be in the best position to help contribute.

For this meeting, we will outline all the contributed issues and then open up the table to encourage people to discuss about the contributed issues that resonate most with them.

## Event Details

* Event Title: Designing Open Democracy - What are the issues relating to democracy that needs public traction?
* Date: Wednesday the 24th of April 2019
* Time: Starting at 6pm (Room open at 5:30pm)
* Location: Melbourne Business Centre, Level 9, 440 Collins Street, Melbourne Victoria 3000 (melbournebusinesscentre.com.au)
**Also much thanks to Melbourne Business Centre for assistance in providing a quiet meeting space for us**

There will be some small teas and instant coffee available for all attendees, as well as some nibbles.

Also everyone is expected to help clean up the meeting room after the meeting has finished.

## Confirmed Non-Partisan speakers:
Dion McCurdy (NewVote)
Tim Wilson Brown (Tor, e-voting specialist)
... more upcoming upon confirmation

## Confirmed Cross-Partisan speakers:
Brandon Selic (Pirate Party Australia)
Robyn Stevenson (Online Democracy Australia)
... more upcoming upon confirmation

## Here is some of the issues that was submitted for consideration. Feel free to suggest further:

* Send a submission to APS Review responding to “Priorities for Change”, advocating stronger commitment to civil society engagement.
* Send a submission to Open Government Forum urging implementation of Commitment to civil society engagement.
* The effect of Trump on truth, and the knock on effect to true informed Democracy
* Particularly trust in democratic participation having any effect on society
* Identify what will will block democratic reform and work out the best way to address it.
* Identify the effect of poverty and inequality in democratic civil engagement.
* Improving the public trust on the integrity of election oversight processes and audit process. (Who watches the watcher?)
* Identify how public emotions affect election outcome. Promote methods or reform that would address this effect.
* We need to get parties and the government system to investigate not just their voting system… but focus even more on how their nomination process work. If the nomination process is not democratic, then even with a democratic voting process, the outcome will not be democratic. Garbage in, garbage out.
* We need to push existing parties to focus on improving their own internal democracy.

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We are currently looking for more speakers for presentation style events. Get in touch with us if interested.

# Speakers Planned For 2019 (Event Date TBA)

* Robert Crouch to talk about his idea of a better method of calculating voters intention that could replace our current way to tallying up preferences.
* Guy Kennedy from Policy Incubator to talk about his policy development platform and how it is intended to assist the public, institutions and politicians make better policies.

# Topics future speakers could touch on:

* Governance: Transparency, Corruption, Accountability
* Structural: Voting/Decision systems, Decentralisation
* Technology: Cyber-security, Blockchain, Cognitive Security
* Sociological: Political apathy, Information Asymmetry, Citizen engagement
* Economic: Business/Union, Economic Democracy, Participatory Budgeting

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Also don't forget about our web discussion forum at:
https://discuss.designingopendemocracy.com/