Introducing RxC Voice

At the RadicalxChange Foundation, we are developing a new platform for collective decision making that will change the way that we govern ourselves: we call it RxC Voice. In 2021, we will start using RxC Voice to democratically determine the Foundation’s yearly strategic priorities with broad participation from the community. RxC Voice will be RadicalxChange’s first online platform for collective decision making. It will combine Quadratic Voting with tools such as Pol.is into a new, end-to-end democratic process that advances plurality, community, and equality.

We love Quadratic Voting because it captures a detailed expression of voter preferences. But preference expression is just one component of a healthy democratic process. RxC Voice aims to incorporate other components as well: delegation of responsibility, deliberation, and ballot construction.

Delegation determines who can participate in a democratic process. In RxC Voice, the Delegation Stage will begin when the platform administrators distribute an equal number of voice credits to each person on an initial list of delegates. Each delegate will then be allowed to transfer any number of their own voice credits to anyone they think deserves a say in the process. These delegated credits will then be “matched” from a quadratic matching fund. This will result in a fluid, potentially-expanding, and democratically-decided set of voters.

The process will then proceed to the Deliberation Stage, in which the delegates will participate in a Pol.is conversation. In a Pol.is conversation, each delegate has the ability to post as many “comments” as they like, proposing or commenting upon strategic priorities that could make it onto the final ballot. Each delegate may also “agree” or “disagree” with other delegates’ comments.

At the end of the Deliberation Stage, the statistical analysis provided by Pol.is will highlight the comments that generate the highest level of consensus. RadicalxChange Foundation’s leadership will then translate the results of the Pol.is conversation into a ballot, consolidating duplicate / overlapping proposals, and ensuring that all the items on the final ballot are viable, lawful priorities that RadicalxChange Foundation could really pursue. This translation from the Pol.is conversation to a ballot will be accompanied by a written explanation, somewhat like a written decision, so that if you think we are not respecting the process, we will lose legitimacy.

Finally, the delegates will participate in a Quadratic Vote on the items composing the final ballot. The results from this Election Stage will be final—and in our first use case, the ranked list of proposals will become the RadicalxChange Foundation’s 2021 Strategic Agenda.

We have high hopes for what we can accomplish when we combine advanced democratic tools like Quadratic Voting and Pol.is into a comprehensive decision making process. RxC Voice is an experiment. But it is one that we believe will result in a fairer, more democratic system built on collaboration and consensus. Our highest hope is that it will be a template for other open, global communities to make democratic decisions at scale, and if it works well we will open the tool for others to use. We look forward to testing it with you in 2021!