Your Party and the limits of online voting 

At the founding conference, members of Your Party endorsed an online voting system for future conferences. John Stephens warns that this choice undermines the participatory and meaningful forms of democracy we need.

Grassroots members of Your Party won key victories at the first party conference. Your Party will move to having an elected collective leadership. This is an obvious pre-requisite for a movement hoping to democratise society and break with the hierarchies of power created under capitalism. Party members should be making the big decisions while holding that collective body to account. Voters decided that a digital model could achieve this, however we need to be wary of e-democracy. 

We want Your Party to be as democratic as possible. Part of this means radicalising our understanding of democracy. In liberal capitalist societies, we have the pretence of democracy. This is characterised by infrequent votes that rubber-stamp decisions made elsewhere and a lack of spaces to meaningfully deliberate on the direction of society.

Digital democracy appeals partly because it builds on our normal conceptions of what democracy is, with a superficial added layer of accessibility. Just like our parliamentary democracy and referendums like Brexit, digital democracy takes the electorate as an unthinking mass. Each individual voter has the right to vote but very little power.

Under these systems, the voters never decide how parties themselves choose their representatives, or how policy and political questions are framed before they are voted on. We are atomised, promoting apathy and normalising powerlessness. In a digital democracy regime, someone will still have to decide the questions that get asked and how decisions are implemented. This will be an unaccountable permanent management class in the party who, ironically, will make collective decisions in an ongoing deliberative discussion amongst themselves.

Motions that rise to the top of the agenda will be based on who has the biggest mailing lists and can mobilise a passive supporter group. Votes in a digital democratic system are likely to be won based on name recognition and personality, rather than debate. Even at this conference, where much of democratic significance was won, the framing was mostly between Corbyn and Sultana, rather than based on ideas and deeper debate.

Voting as an individual at the ballot box or behind a computer screen also breeds conservatism. You feel alone and uncertain of how many people will follow you if you choose a radical path. Many people react to this by deferring to what they believe to be the ‘average’ belief. In contrast, when votes take place as part of a generative debate, more radical ideas can gain a real hearing. Crucially, we can see and feel that we are not alone. This is why Thatcher banned workplace votes for strike action and moved to postal ballots. 

At the conference the main argument that won the day for digital democracy was about accessibility. Many were concerned that disabled members would be locked out of decision-making, and that those with caring responsibilities or on low incomes would be less likely to attend. This was understandable given the disorganised and inaccessible nature of the conference in Liverpool. However, this should not be mistaken for a natural state of affairs. 

Many unions and socialist groups have more accessible models for their conferences, including hybridisation, free childcare, and expenses for travel and accommodation – including rs21 and my own union, the NEU. Digital democracy also excludes many who struggle to access the internet or who can’t engage as fully in online debates and the social media platforms which distort the politics of the party. Experiments with digital democracy in Momentum and Podemos in the recent past did nothing to extend access and kept power in the hands of party leaders.

We need a deeper form of democracy in Your Party than online voting. This is what a delegate system based on branches provides. 

Branches are where the party will be brought to life through community campaigning and discussion. Branches must be seen as the lifeblood of democratic engagement in the party. Strategic and political decisions are best made in the context of that engagement, activity and experience and delegates to conference should be able to draw on the debates that are taking place at the grassroots level of the party. So in a thoroughly democratic party conference delegates must be elected from the branches well in advance – not sortitioned at the last minute.

Delegates are then answerable to their branches over how they voted, and may lose their mandate to attend a future conference if the branch decides they were not represented.

It is also important to develop a delegate system to encourage members to grow into tribunes of our politics. No one becomes more articulate or confident by voting alone. Discussion and debate is essential. A diverse delegate conference would be much more valuable for accessibility than online voting, as it would put underrepresented groups on the platform to be heard, not just increase the diversity of the spectators to the show. Where will our future leaders come from if all that is required of activists is anonymous voting?

There is no perfect form of democracy. Democracy has form and content. The strongest democracy raises levels of engagement for increasing numbers of people. But it must also include deliberative processes, accountability, transparency, and build a sense of power and unity. This is far more likely in a delegate system than an online vote. After we win a delegate system the fight for democracy will continue in another way – but if we go down the digital route we will always be fighting on the leadership’s terms.

Finally, we must consider what we are democratically deliberating on. It is inconceivable that our object – social revolution – will be achieved by disembodied digital processes alone. Maximally democratic social movements are built on mass strikes and demonstrations. How can we prepare Your Party to participate in these in a leading role if our internal norms of discussion are individualised click-votes?