Canadians generally get to cast their ballots every few years—granted, a little more often lately—and between general elections, MPs call the shots on behalf of their constituents.
A new website hopes to change that pattern, by allowing citizens to vote on bills currently before Parliament.
Voting on Democratize.ca is as easy as clicking the “Like” button on Facebook. The main difference is, users get to say “Yay” or “Nay” to bills—with the hope their MPs actually listen.
“It’s a way to either bypass or supplement ... the political process in order to get right to the policy,” explains Marguerite Marlin, the website’s co-founder.
The website divides votes on each bill by riding, so politicians and visitors get a better sense of the prevailing opinion in each constituency. The site also indexes bills according to 40 subject areas, ranging from aboriginal and northern affairs to Senate reform.
Marlin splits her time between the Montreal riding of Papineau, where she lives, and Ottawa, where she writes summary reports of federal committee meetings.
The young political enthusiast enlisted the help of friend Chris Bush to design the website. Bush wanted to put his programming and data collection skills to good use. It didn’t hurt that he’s also interested in politics.
“For some reason, [the other] week I was watching CPAC, the Parliamentary Q & A sessions, which I thought were just awesome,” he says. “It was like watching a football game for me.”
In a sense, Democratize.ca is just another way to bring parliament to Canadian homes. But voters aren’t the only ones visiting. Some MPs and their staff have also started following the website’s development. That means there's potential for interaction between MPs and citizens, says Marlin.
“The fact that [MPs] are following us on Twitter is good,” she says. “It means that they’re paying attention.”
At press time, Democratize.ca had tallied 25,496 pageviews since its launch on Nov. 22. That includes 1,273 votes on bills currently before Parliament by 326 registered users.
“It has definitely exceeded my expectations,” Bush says, adding the main advertising for the website has come from a post on Reddit Canada and an interview on CBC Radio One. “I guess people are interested, so I’m excited about that.”
The website is based on an honour system. Users must provide their postal code and declare whether they are eligible to vote in Canada.
Marlin hopes her website will encourage politicians to break away from partisanship. Since she's followed politics, she’s witnessed “very intelligent” and “very committed” MPs fail to have constructive discussions because of rigid party discipline.
“I think if they had a much more public rapport with their constituents, they wouldn’t be flogging the same old party lines,” Marlin says. “There would be some accountability.”
Marlin and Bush currently work out of their apartments and coffee shops, and fund the website themselves, but they say upgrades are in the works. The pair hopes to allow users to automatically compare their votes on bills with those of their MP, and they also plan to set up a discussion board.
“So that maybe users who... have more of an armchair interest can see each section [of the bills] and see where the real controversies are,” Bush says. “They can see different interpretations of specific sections of the bill.”
Francophones need not worry. They can expect a French-language version of the website in the future.
—with files from Samantha Feder
