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Four vouchers supplied by the city of Seattle. Photograph: City of Seattle

If money amplifies the voices of wealthy Americans in politics, Seattle is trying something that aims to give low-income and middle-class voters a signal boost.

The citys new Democracy Voucher program, the first of its kind in the US, provides every eligible Seattle resident with $100 in taxpayer-funded vouchers to donate to the candidates of their choice. The goal is to incentivize candidates to take heed of a broad range of residents homeless people, minimum-wage workers, seniors on fixed incomes as well as the big-dollar donors who often dictate the political conversation.

This Augusts primary is the trial run for the program. But before Seattle can crow about having re-enfranchised long-overlooked voters, it must contend with conservative opposition.

The experiment comes at a time of seemingly new possibilities for campaign financing. Bernie Sanders demonstrated that small donors can float a campaign, with 99% of his donations coming from individual donors, 59% of which were considered small donations.

Last fall, South Dakota voters approved a program similar to Seattles, joining more than a dozen other states with some form of public financing, usually a matching fund for small campaign donations. Cities such as Portland, Oregon, and Berkeley, California, also followed the public-financing trend last year.

In Seattle, if we had a concerted effort to register, educate, and organize renters and people who are homeless as a political force, our city politics would look rather different than they currently do, said Alison Eisinger of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, which works to register homeless voters, among other advocacy efforts.

The democracy voucher program was created by a voter-approved ballot measure in November 2015 and is funded by a 10-year, $30m property tax levy. Registered voters are automatically sent the vouchers. Those who are not registered and those without a permanent address such as homeless people can apply by mail or in person with a city commission.

Seattle candidates are not required to participate in the voucher program. But Jon Grant, a leftist city council candidate who previously led the Tenants Union of Washington, has made the vouchers a centerpiece of his campaign. He has pushed to collect vouchers from over 1,000 people, including those living in several homeless encampments.

Of the $145,933 in donations that Grant reported on the most recent campaign disclosure form, $128,800 is from vouchers.

I took a pledge not to accept any money from corporations and developers, Grant said. I wanted to show that democracy vouchers can support grassroots campaigns that want to address systemic issues like homelessness.

As part of that effort, Grant spent several months organizing in three unsanctioned homeless encampments, helping to set up a communal tent in one encampment, and registering people to vote and receive vouchers. We wanted to work with those residents to assist them to stabilize their living situation and shine some light on how the city was handling the situation, he said. We started building trust and organizing there and wanted to educate people that they had access to democracy vouchers.

Grants campaign received a few vouchers from them, but the city cleared the encampments before the campaigns organizing efforts truly gained steam. Though they are gone, Grant is still working to engage homeless people around the city.

Yet at the same time that Grants campaign is being cited as a democracy-voucher success, lawyers are presenting it as evidence in a bid to kill the program.

Libertarian law firm Pacific Legal Foundation is representing two Seattle homeowners in their lawsuit against the city. They allege that democracy vouchers violate their first amendment rights because their taxes are funding candidates they oppose.

PLF lawyer Ethan Blevins wrote in an email that Grants campaign highlights the injustice done to property owners who oppose his candidacy. Mr Grants views on rental housing clash with the interests of landlords yet these are the very people who have unwillingly fronted most of the money for his campaign.

University of Washington constitutional law professor Hugh Spitzer told the Stranger that some of their legal reasoning doesnt make any sense at all and suggests a misunderstanding of how property taxes work.

Naturally, Grant agrees. The voucher program is very much in line with the values of most Seattle voters. This lawsuit is the death rattle of many corporate interests who were hoping to keep their hold on city hall.

Lawsuit aside, prospects for the vouchers are murky.

Vouchers alone will not change the political status quo, said Devin Silvernail, executive director of homeless advocacy organization Be:Seattle, which recently launched an effort to help homeless people register to vote when they check into shelters.

There are a lot of folks elected to office who, to be frank, dont give a shit about people who are having a hard time, he said. Still, putting vouchers in homeless peoples hands will be really useful as the start of a way for them to get their perspective known by elected officials.

Proponents must also combat feelings concerning the futility of voting.

Our little voucher would be so small compared to corporate Americas donations, said Soukaynah, a woman in her late 50s who was part of a knitting circle on Wednesday at the Marys Place day center for homeless women in downtown Seattle.

Bobby Gene, a 75-year-old who also declined to give her last name, was homeless until she was recently placed in a low-income housing complex for seniors. She received democracy vouchers but doesnt plan to use them.

Maybe they would do some good, but politicians dont want to listen to us, she said. Candidates, she suggested, as good as vanish once they attain office.

We only see them when its time to vote, when theyre kissing babies and shaking hands. Then we never hear from them.

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'Democracy vouchers' aim to amplify low-income voices, to conservative ire - The Guardian

Greens leader Richard Di Natalie and NSW senator Lee Rhiannon at a press conference in Canberra in March. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

Lets get some reality back on the table with regard to the current debate within the Australian Greens. This is certainly a debate about democracy in the party but its not about our members having a say in party policy or preselections.

Lets dump the idea that this is about grassroots democracy it isnt.

All Australian Greens members, whether from Tasmania, New South Wales, Queensland or anywhere else, have a say on policy, which is formulated from the local branches upwards and decided at our national conference. I am really proud of that fact and about how it sets us apart from the old political parties in Australias parliament.

Lets also dump the idea that only the NSW Greens vote consistently with party policy. That is so wrong.

One thing Greens MPs in every state and nationally are proud of is our record of being faithful to our four principles of ecology, social justice, peace and non-violence, and participatory democracy, as well as our accountability to our members for the decisions we make and the votes we have cast.

The Australian Greens party room is the Greens equivalent to shadow cabinet. All members, including NSW, hold portfolios on behalf of the party members around the country. They bring forward recommendations in their portfolios on parliamentary votes, which are then debated, and decisions are reached by consensus. They have the party policy as the basis for decisions but daily have to decide whether to support matters that come before parliament, regardless of whether there is a policy on them or not.

But there can be no consensus if one person is already bound to vote according to a directive from a liaison committee in their own state. If all states took that view, then the Australian Greens could never make a decision.

The undemocratic exemption to the Australian Greens constitution given to NSW in 1992 is what is being challenged

No state committee can be kept up to date in real time with parliamentary debates and decisions across all portfolio responsibilities. That is why every state except NSW agreed at the time of the formation of the Australian Greens that our elected members would be entrusted with a conscience vote enabling them to stay true to both the partys philosophy and current policy, and the wellbeing of their constituency.

NSW, alone among all of the state parties, insisted that its elected members only had delegated authority to vote as they were instructed by the party and had no discretion.

The NSW Greens refused to form a national Australian Greens party unless they were given an exemption from the conscience vote. They locked it in by insisting that it could only be changed by a consensus decision of national conference or a 75% majority vote of the conference to conduct a full membership ballot on the issue. Therein lies the problem that has dogged the party since 1992.

While the Greens retain our core commitment to consensus-based decision making, the NSW party has effectively secured veto power over the whole of the membership of the Australian Greens.

By binding their elected members in a manner that is at odds with consensus-based decision making, they exert an influence and regularly veto decisions in a manner that is neither democratic nor in the spirit of equality.

That was the price members from the other states paid to form a national party. Now the NSW senator sits in the party room but refuses to sign the rules that govern every other elected member. NSW benefits from the work of the whole party room but picks and chooses what it supports or undermines. In a caucus that might be acceptable but in a shadow cabinet it is untenable.

How is it democratic or effective for all our other MPs and senators to negotiate with the government of the day and try to come to a consensus decision after consultation with the members around the whole country and then find that a parliamentary liaison committee in NSW has determined before that negotiation is over that it will oppose that decision and campaign against it?

The undemocratic exemption to the Australian Greens constitution given to NSW in 1992 is what is being challenged in 2017.

It is no surprise that NSW wants to keep that power at any cost but party democracy, equality and unity can no longer afford it. It must be addressed, and the constitution must be democratic and afford equal rights to all its members.

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This debate isn't about grassroots democracy: it's about Greens unity - The Guardian

(Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

It was supremely ironic. President Trump stood in front of a monument to the Warsaw uprising, the Polish underground resistance armys catastrophic, failed attempt to overthrow Nazi rule at the end of World War II. The uprising was a national tragedy: 200,000 of the countrys best-educated and most patriotic young people, the men and women who would have been its leaders, died. The capital was burned to the ground. And in large part, the disaster was caused by the fact that none of the other allies not Britain, obviously not the Soviet Union, and certainly not the United States came to Polands defense, even though the resistance army believed they would.

In front of this monument to unfulfilled expectations of distant allies, this memorial to the horrors of a Europe riven by brutal nationalist struggle, Trump offered his support to a Polish government that is both the most nationalist in Europe and now the most isolated in Europe. He made lengthy remarks about the uprising, complete with the now familiar references to the blood of patriots, and at the same time offered his support for Poland in carefully delineated terms.

In essence, Trump called on Poland to help the United States in the struggle of Western civilization against Islamist terrorism though at times he made it sound as if the real enemy were cultural, not political. He didnt talk about the democratic values that would unite the West in this struggle, but of the ties of God and family, language designed to appeal to nationalist-Catholic Poles, but not to the whole country. He made only one allusion to Russia, speaking of its destabilization of Ukraine (in fact it was an invasion) even though Russia poses a far greater threat to Poland than Islamist terrorism. Russia will hold major military exercises on Polands borders in September. A previous version of these exercises included a simulated nuclear attack.

In failing to focus on Russia, Trump broke with precedent. By comparison, President Barack Obama, at a speech in Estonia in 2014, declared clearly that Russias aggression against Ukraine was a threat to a Europe that is whole and free and at peace. Trump also broke with precedent, but in a different way: He barely mentioned democracy. And he alluded mostly negatively to the rest of Europe, speaking (misleadlingly) of the billions and billions of dollars that Europeans are now supposedly paying into NATO, as if it were a protection racket. When he lauded the military equipment and the gas that the United States will sell to Poland, he joked about needing to charge more.

He did after refusing to do so on his last trip finally refer to Article 5, the part of the NATO treaty that says an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all. But earlier, at a news conference, he told journalists that he had not discussed military guarantees with Polands president. And after his speech, the American president known for his mendaciousness and untrustworthiness left Warsaw for his meeting with the Russian president.

In truth, Poland, like its neighbors, will only ever be safe from Russian military intervention or political interference if the country is deeply integrated into a strong, cohesive, unified and democratic Europe. It will only be safe if its own democratic institutions are strong enough to withstand outside meddling. But right now, Poland is run by a political party, Law and Justice, that has launched an assault on the countrys democratic institutions and has, by doing so, managed to alienate all of its most important European neighbors.

The free press is under attack in Poland, along with the independence of the judiciary. The current defense minister has even begun to undermine the professionalism and apolitical character of the military. These policies have alienated Poland from the rest of Europe and also led to a deep schism inside the country. The crowd at Trumps speech, supporters bused in from around the country, booed and shouted insults at opposition politicians, among them Lech Walesa, the anti-communist hero, despite the fact that this was a solemn, national, military and diplomatic occasion.

In giving such a speech in such a place, Trump has confirmed Polands nationalist government in its isolationist and anti-democratic course. He also encouraged Poles to be brave, as in the past, when they fought alone, and encouraged them once again to place their faith in distant allies. Lets hope that faith never has to be tested.

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Trump affirms the Polish government's assault on democracy - Washington Post

Bitcoin is sometimes thought of as a new, more-democratic form of money that is controlled by the general public, but this point of view may miss the point of the decentralized, peer-to-peer digital cash system.

During a recent talk at a Bitcoin meetup in Sydney, Australia, Mastering Bitcoin author Andreas Antonopoulos was asked for his thoughts on whether Bitcoin could be considered a democracy. In his response, Antonopoulos shared his thoughts on democracy more generally, how Bitcoin does not fall under that categorization, and how the balance of power works in Bitcoin.

After pointing out that he himself is from Greece, which is where the concept of democracy was first developed, Antonopoulos noted that he personally doesnt believe in raw democracy.

[Democracy was invented] under very specific circumstances: 3,000 land owning, slave owning white males got to decide for themselves and the 150,000 slaves, women, and [children] who they owned as property, said Antonopoulos.

Antonopoulos went on to explain that democracy, without the proper restraints, gives 51% of the population the ability to decide to kill the other 49% for any reason they choose.

Democracy without restraints, without human rights, without civil rights, without constitutional protections is a brutal system of oppression where once you get that sliver of majority, you can eradicate everybody else, said Antonopoulos.

After discussing the perils of raw democracy, Anthopoulos also clarified that the sorts of constitutional republican democracies and parliamentary democracies seen today are intended to guard against these issues.

Getting to the topic of Bitcoin, Anthopoulos was clear in his belief that Bitcoin is not a democracy.

Bitcoin isnt a democracy not even in the mining, said Antonopoulos. Bitcoin is a system of supermajority consensus where it takes a very large percentage of the deciding groups (the five constituencies of consensus) in order to make change, which makes change very difficult.

A similar sentiment was shared during the 2016 MIT Bitcoin Expo, when a panel of Bitcoin developers were generally dismissive of the concept of Bitcoin as a democratic system.

Antonopoulos went on to say that some may refer to the political system used in Bitcoin as cypherpunk or cryptoanarchy, but he added that new words may be needed to describe how Bitcoin works in a political sense.

Bitcoin is redefining political and organizational systems not just Bitcoin: open, public blockchains, said Antonopoulos. This technology born out of the internet and expressing some of the radically egalitarian, open philosophies of free flowing information, freedom of speech, freedom of association on a transnational basis that transcends not just borders but every aspect of identity without identity.

In Antonopouloss view, the traditional, democratic systems do not scale globally due to their hierarchical nature. He referred to Bitcoin as a radical, new political system.

Flat, network-based, collaborative, decentralized adhocracies on the internet may be the new thing, said Antonopoulos. Who knows? It will be fun to find out.

Expanding on the question about Bitcoin as a democracy, Antonopoulos was also asked to explain how the balance of power between various actors in the Bitcoin ecosystem works.

We dont know yet were finding out, responded Antonopoulos.

To Antonopouloss point, the upcoming deployment of the SegWit2x proposal may be a test of the balance of power in Bitcoin. While a chain split can be prevented during the activation of the soft fork for Segregated Witness, its unclear what will happen if Bitcoin companies and miners decide to attempt a hard-forking increase of the block size limit.

All of that noise doesnt change the Bitcoin consensus rules, said Antonopoulos in terms of signed agreements and chatter on social media. At the end of the day, its going to play out on the network protocol with nodes that are participating that express the economic interests of their users through choices about which set of consensus rules they use on their live systems and with their transactions.

Antonopoulos added that talk is cheap when it comes to changes to Bitcoins consensus rules. At that last moment, when push comes to shove and you see the consensus rules are moving one way you know, you stick your finger in the air and you detect which way the wind is blowing suddenly, your very sacred, principled opinions go straight out the window and you follow your pocket, he said.

Antonopoulos concluded this discussion around Bitcoin governance by noting that Bitcoin could end up splitting into two separate cryptocurrency networks. I dont like that particular solution for Bitcoin, but some others do, he said.

Image from Pixabay.

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Antonopoulos: 'Bitcoin Isn't a Democracy' - Crypto Insider (press release) (blog)

What European democracies have lacked most, since at least the 1980s, is high-profile political vision.

Helmut Kohl. October 1978.Wikicommons/German Federal Archive. Some rights reserved.In recent weeks there have been crucial elections in three large European countries, France (presidential and parliamentary), Britain, and Italy (municipal elections). Overall, about 105 million voters have been called to the polls. While results have been quite surprising, and relatively new figures (Jeremy Corbyn and Emmanuel Macron) have gained international prominence, European democracy has not really demonstrated its strengths.

The most encouraging aspect has been the rise in the youth vote, which in Britain has mainly been won by Corbyns Labour. British youngsters are somewhat better off than their peers on the continent: youth unemployment would be around 11%, much less than in most EU countries (22% in France; 35% in Italy; 39% in Spain). And yet they have expressed dissatisfaction by voting en masse for Corbyn and rejecting the perspectives of austerity, debt, and uncertainty.

At the same time their choice has been a demand for better politics, and for a return of values, vision, and ideas; they have had enough of self-serving Oxford-educated cliques, and lite infighting. They have had enough of the few, of all the browbeating issued by the oligarchy in the run-up to the Brexit referendum as well as in its aftermath. An anti-lite attitude has emerged also among the French youth. At least in the first round of the presidential polls (22 April), those under 24 preferred more extremist Le Pen and Melenchon to the moderate and centrist, Emmanuel Macron. Macron largely won the second round and the legislative polls; yet the overall turnout in the latter two rounds was as low as 49 and 43%. So the fact that Republique en Marche! brought many youngsters to the National Assembly is not a true measure of its appeal among younger generations. Will Macron really bring change? If so, in what way?

A strong political cleavage, also evident last year in the US elections, is forming between metropolitan areas and the countryside. Better-educated urbanites voted Democrats, Labour, and Macron. Most British large cities voted Labour; in London, Corbyns party obtained 49 seats; the Conservatives, 21. Similar conditions apply to Macron in France he won Paris with a share of almost 90%.

That said, Labour and En Marche! differ profoundly in many other respects. Corbyns platform is clear and well-defined, partly through discussion with a high-profile (and much-debated) Committee of Economic Advisors. There is a party, there is a vision. By contrast, and despite his connections with heavyweight economists (such as Jacques Attali and Jean Pisani-Ferry), Macron has been vague and generic, bordering on demagogy and resembling a constantly metamorphosing hologram.

His case is as worrying as that of the so-called personality parties (Berlusconis Forza Italia being the most famous example) which emerged in Europe about twenty years ago and which still maintain a degree of organisation and structure; Republique en Marche! looks like a big tent, one tailored to a supposedly charismatic leader, who somehow puts himself before and above the party, and has crucial links to little-transparent external forces (such as high finance). Needless to say, this evolution is highly problematic for modern democracy.

Such a growing personalisation of politics, and the volatility of party structures in peripheral areas, have also contributed to the decline in popularity of globalist and progressive forces in the rural areas. Feeling more and more marginalised, the periphery (a derogatory and unfair term in itself) has turned both far right and far left.

Protectionism, re-industrialisation, exit from the euro, and other (sometimes populist) slogans have captured the attention and the votes of dispossessed factory workers, miners, agricultural workers, or the unemployed. Can the global world, if it wants to stick to democratic principles, afford to neglect and forget millions and millions of voters? After all, Hillary Clinton, amongst other reasons, lost the US presidential polls in the peripheries, while Macron realised the point a bit late on, after his opponent Marine Le Pen visited an embattled factory in his own home town, Amiens.

Now though is the time to act. Will the new president understand that democracy cannot be rule by the few and demonstrate this in the facts and choices he puts before people, beyond his flamboyant rhetoric?

What European democracies have lacked most, since at least the 1980s, is high-profile political vision. A politician with a vision in fact passed away on 16 June: we are talking about Helmut Kohl. The former German chancellor was not flawless (from a CDU financial scandal to the much-debated early recognition of Croatia, which contributed to increasing tensions in the former Yugoslavia). But he had a grand vision for Germany and Europe, and pursued it despite numerous obstacles. German re-unification, in his view, complemented European integration; it was Kohl, who, despite little knowledge of economics, pushed the euro as a political project of peace between Germany and France.

As he used to recall, he had lost an older brother in World War Two and was deeply committed to European peace. Moreover, German re-unification might have given him a place in history books, but probably cost him the chancellorship (in 1995), because of its tremendous economic effects on the eastern Lnder. In a sense, he sacrificed his own career, and did not then attempt the financially rewarding adventures into consultancies, banks, or corporations, which so many younger politicians have attempted.

Macron is 48 years Kohls junior. Will history remember him as a statesman or a pale hologram, a leader, or a figurehead in pursuit of factional interests? Perhaps it is too early to say. But western democracy urgently needs to regain the vision, the ideals, the nobility of the generation of politicians who witnessed World War Two and its aftermath. It matters to Europe, to democracy, and to our future. Better economic conditions, which so many youngsters need, require first and foremost better politics.

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Democracy in the age of Macron - Open Democracy