To show you how Consensual Debating works, we have used the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) expansion project as a Case Study. It is an example of how such a decision and similar ones could have been made much faster, being more effective, far more consensual, representing truly randomly selected citizens of London.
Now, please read the Case Study and try to vote. You will not be able to see the overall result of the voting (that would require the presence of facilitators), but you will be able to compare your voting to that of other participants’ vote.
The voting process is supported by POLIS. It was created in the USA and its core open-source software is implemented on the original POLIS website. Sustensis and Consensus are grateful for making this software available to a wider community.
POLIS has been seamlessly integrated with Consensual Debating. You need to register first and then sign in if you would like to participate in a specific debate. Here is some basic information on how to participate in Consensual Debating and vote, uisng the ULEZ project as an example.
- If you just want to try Consensual Debating then you will find the introduction to the project under London’s ULEZ Case Study tab.
- If you are one of the participants in a real Consensual Debating project arranged by your organization then the introduction to the project will be under one of the locked PROJECTs. The data will only be visible to the participants of your organization, who will recive the login credentials.
- The structure and the principles of the website operations are the same for any of the PROJECTs as for the Case Study.
- When an organization requests conducting Consensual Debating, then a PROJECT’s tabs is created for this organization and all data will only be visible to the participants of that organization.
- Once you enter a Project a new page template will open on the right with the menu for a particualr Debate.
- It will have several sub tabs corresponding to project objectives.
- Each objective is preceded by the the project’s acronym like ULEZ and contains about 10 ‘seed statements’ prepared in advance by the AI Assistant. These are initial ‘seed statements’ like for ULEZ below:
- ULEZ 1 – Improve air quality
- ULEZ 2 – Encourage sustainable transportation
- ULEZ 3 – Optimize car use
- ULEZ 4 – Minimize negative social impact of ULEZ expansion 5
- ULEZ 5 – Target most polluting vehicle
You can add your own statements during voting on which all participants will be voting in the next round. Therefeore, after the first round there will be more statements added by the participants. By the end of the final round there will usually be about 10 statements for each objective
After each voting there is a break and a facilitated deliberation eitehr in person or online, whern the participants are shown the overall results and any additional statements, which have been introduced by the participants for a given objective. If the first round of voting does not create 60% majority for at least one statement, then there are subsequent voting rounds, until such a majority has been achieved.
After the final deliberation and voting round there is one more voting. This is the voting on the overall motion (proposal), which is marked F. It contains the same statement as the 0 objective e.g. in ULEZ case it is : ‘The Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) needs to be extended to outer London’ . The results of the voting for particular objectives and the final voting are summarized in a Report, like for ULEZ.
The voting is closed once all objectives have at least one statement, for which there is a 60% majority. If the voting is carried out without facilitators, e.g. online, then the next round will normally be opened by Consensus AI next day. This process will shortly be completely and seamlessly managed by an AI Assistant. However, you can see the results of the voting at the end of the round once you have entered your email address. These results are at the very bottom of the screen (read a short instruction how to interpret the results – CLICK ON ‘MORE‘) and the click on ‘MAJORITY OPINION’, which will show which group has voted for which statement with at leest 60% majority.
The pages that enable voting look like the one below. When you have clicked on one of the DEBATE’s subtabs, you will be shown the first statement on which to vote. All initial statements are listed in the upper part of the page (see below). The pages for ULEZ case study (and on Digital Identities) projects are not locked, so you can vote without any restrictions. You will only see the result of your vote for a given statement, not for the whole project, as this requires the facilitator’s presence. Watch how your vote has impacted the overall vote (blue circle) and your relative position to others who have voted before you.
The pages that enable voting look like the one below. When you have clicked on one of the DEBATE’s subtabs, you will be shown the first statement on which to vote. All initial statements are listed in the upper part of the page (see below). The pages for ULEZ case study (and on Digital Identities) projects are not locked, so you can vote without any restrictions. You will only see the result of your vote for a given statement, not for the whole project, as this requires the facilitator’s presence. Watch how your vote has impacted the overall vote (blue circle) and your relative position to others who have voted before you.
