Extending Handivote to Handle Digital Economic Decisions

摘要

There is a growing realisation that the populace need to be consulted on a more regular basis about issues that concern them. We address a particular economic problem, that of national budgeting, and show how digital technology can be applied in an understandable way in this domain. The current situation is that governments are reluctant to conduct plebiscites due to the expenses inherent in the traditional voting model. Handivote is a system which allows maximal participation, using a ubiquitous input mechanism, the mobile phone, to support decision-making. In this paper we show how the Handivote system could be extended to invite voter input into national economic decisions. Our proposal includes an algorithm which maximises voter satisfaction in the presence of budgetary constraints, and the preferences revealed by the vote.