An Australian Political Party with Blockchain Ideals

A new Australian political party called Flux  is aiming to ‘upgrade democracy’ and change the way Australians vote by using the Flux app built entirely on the blockchain platform.

What is the Flux?

This is a tool that enables Australians to participate directly with parliament, making the need for trust in elected officials to become a thing of the past.

On July 2, the Flux Party are putting up 13 candidates for election to Australia’s Senate in federal elections. By using a cellphone app, Australians who can prove they are registered voters will be able to inform elected represented senators how to vote in parliament.

Every Australian enrolled in the Flux app will receive one vote for each bill before parliament. For issues they don’t care about they can simply swap their vote for a vote on the issues they do care about. They then cast their vote where a Flux representative will vote proportionately to how Flux participants vote.

A promotional video of Flux says:

By letting our communities self-organize, we’ll naturally end up with specialists making decisions.

It is also claimed that the blockchain technology will solve the online voting problems such as ballot secrecy, incorruptibility, and verification.

The founders of Flux, Max Kaye and Nathan Spataro, claim that they want to improve democracy with a belief that the current structure for decision making and leadership are outdated. In Spataro’s view, people are tired of Australia’s two biggest parties, Labor and the Liberals. In his view they have hijacked representative democracy, forcing voters to compromise their views.

He said Flux wants to restore power to the people:

In 2016, when we have the ability to express ourselves so uniquely, why should we have to sacrifice our political beliefs for a party line?

At the moment, Flux is just running for a few senatorial positions, but its founders are hopeful that this tool could change the way of politics in the future. They are also launching a startup, inviting political parties around the world to take up this new app.

Spataro says:

Flux doesn’t stop with these elections regardless of the outcome.

However, with just over 3,000 members the party faces challenges ahead. Namely, that the party needs to win more seats and the technology needs to be tested on real-world decisions. The founders, though, are impatient for change in the political world.

Spataro says:

Both of us have felt for a long time that politics is not the way we want it to be.

Featured image from Flux.