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The principles of open source have enormous potential to be applied to democracy. Two initiatives featured at OSCON are doing important work in this area.

The Open Source Digital Voting Foundation (http://www.osdv.org/) seeks to replace our current "black box" electronic voting systems with "glass box" voting, allowing anyone with the skill to do so the ability to audit the means by which our leaders are elected.

DemocracyLab (http://www.democracylab.org) is creating an interactive online think tank, designed to give citizens the ability to collaboratively form public policy and communicate their best ideas to policy makers.

Open Sources values of transparency and collaboration make it a perfect tool for improving our sometimes flawed democratic processes. It speaks to the character of Portland that we're the hub of this kind of activism.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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