Information access for a deep democracy

The new information access provided by Internet is creating a great opportu nity for people's direct involvement in political decisions. Democracy is j ust that, but somehow it has evolved to be the work of professional politic ians with the help of a free press and influence groups. The role of the individual citizen in the recent past was reduced to period ically choose his representative among a small group of candidates. This is a practical solution to the fact that people could not decide every issue. The Internet, however, can be used to allow the citizen to participate in t he asynchronous discussion of issues relevant to him. Both at the local com munity level and at the state level, people can submit ideas, comment on la w proposals, cast vote on current issues, and give suggestions to their rep resentatives. Of course, that could have been done without networks as well , but it was cumbersome and not feasible on a large scale. The presentation is illustrated with the case of Chile. A large number of y oungsters in this country feel alienated by politics. A dismayingly high pr oportion of new potential electors simply choose not to enroll as citizens with vote right. That situation is very dangerous to the long-term survival of democracy as a way to govern this society. Fortunately, youngsters are very enthusiastic Internet users. If they are p rovided with the means to effectively reach the political decision makers a nd influence them, there is hope not only to make them participate in polit ics but to revitalize democracy. The paper presents the conceptual design o f an Internet-based system intended to enable such participation.