[wddm@mkolar.org: Citizen's initiatives introduced in Russia!]

[Joshua N Pritikin]

FYI

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Joshua N. Pritikin
Department of Psychology
University of Virginia
485 McCormick Rd, Gilmer Hall Room 102
Charlottesville, VA 22904
http://people.virginia.edu/~jnp3bc

[Scolos Narbarson]

This is wonderful news Joshua. An idea, put into practice, that will lead to Good developments for Humanity. I bet you were glad to see it too. If you get more about this Russian activity, I hope you share it with Us.    Ol' Dan

FYI

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Miroslav Kolar <wd...@mkolar.org>
To: wd...@world-wide-democracy.net
Cc: 
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 19:02:46 -0700
Subject: Citizen's initiatives introduced in Russia!
Greetings to everybody!

The site Российская общественная инициатива (Russian Citizen's Initiatives), http://www.roi.ru/, was launched on April 2, 2013 by a Russian NGO called "Fond for Information Democracy". It was working in a test regime till April 15, but the citizens have been able to submit their proposals (initiatives) from the very beginning. Today (April 20), there are already 484 initiatives open to voting.

The site does not get any funding from the government. It's initial development was funded personally by the NGO's founder and president Ilya Massukh, and fund its continuing operation they now accept donations from Russian companies and individuals (but no foreign funds).
Nevertheless, this project has been incorporated into the Russian legislative system by a presidential decree of March 3, 2013. This decree requires that the initiatives which satisfy the 2004 law "On referendum in the Russian Federation" have to be acted upon by a legislature body of the respective administrative entity if within one year from their submission they get at least:

For federal initiatives: 100,000 votes;
For regional initiatives: 100,000 votes or votes from 5% of the
                        entity's population, whichever is less;
For municipal initiatives: votes from 5% of the municipal population.

If an initiative did not achieve this minimal level of support, it cannot be submitted again during the next year. One can vote also against an initiative, but the number of negative votes has no effect on its fate. E.g. on the federal level, even if it gets 2 million votes against, it must be considered as long as it also got at least 100,000 votes for. (There is already an initiative, that got 89 votes so far, asking this to be changed: that only initiatives with the number of negative votes not exceeding 1/2 the number of positive votes be passed to the respective legislature).

The system is very good in that it makes sure that every Russian citizen of voting age (18+ years) has exactly on vote, and no foreigners can cast votes. To submit or vote on an initiative, one has to be registered with the portal of Russian governmental services (e-government) where one's identity is verified by a unique pension number (social security number). The only way to cheat would be to be able to get more than one pension number which is considered to be impossible. There is already almost 4 millions of Russian citizens registered with this portal doing their interaction (taxes, permits, document renewal, ...) electronically. (The total population of Russian federation is about 143.5 million.)

Not all submitted initiatives are open to voting. They are at first examined by the legal team of the "Fond for Information Democracy" to verify that they satisfy the requirements of the above mentioned Referendum law. E.g. initiatives asking for the change of the length of office term of the President or the Duma (Parliament) are not allowed. Such inadmissible initiatives, and also all the initiatives that duplicate previously submitted initiatives, are stored in an archive at http://www.roi.ru/poll/?p_f_1_81=1.

Among the archived inadmissible initiatives one can find e.g. the initiative to impeach president Putin, to shorten his term of office, to dissolve parliament and hold new elections, an initiative called "If we collect 50,000 signatures, Russian president will have to perform the Harlem Shake dance", but also a call to reintroduce death penalty (as it is deemed to be against generally accepted principles and international norms). However, most of the initiatives listed in this archive are duplicates/variations of the accepted ones.

On the other hand, e.g. the initiative to abolish a 2001 law granting the Russian president a life-long immunity (including for the activity after leaving presidential office), or the initiative to also allow voting on all the above mentioned inadmissible initiatives are open to voting.

I have learned about this project about 2 weeks ago from an interview with its initiator Ilya Massukh on the opposition's radio station Echo Moskvy (Moscow). The show host voiced the opinion that it is a positive development, and that the opposition will definitely use the initiative site. Ilya Massukh said that before issuing the March 3 decree, president Putin checked with him whether he and his Fund is really willing to set up the site and run it. And they managed to do it ahead of the promised date.

It seems to be a way much better thought of project than e.g. the Obama administration's "We the people" initiative site, that does not check whether the voters are US citizens (I could vote there), whether they vote only once, the threshold is only 5000 signatures (votes), and the reaction to achieving this threshold is an e-mail from a low-level official saying something to the effect that the initiative is nice but inconsistent with the administration's line, and thus cannot be considered.
And nothing even remotely resembling this Russian initiative can be expected in Canada in the nearest future.

It remains to be seen what the reaction of the Russian Duma will be when the first of the federal initiatives pass the 100,000 threshold (it is mandated to act on it, but it is not yet defined how exactly). This may happen in a few more weeks or months as the leading initiative (forbidding the officers and workers of any company with government or municipal participation to buy/use company cars costing more than $45,000) already collected 26,264 votes.
The second leading one (13,583 votes) asks to allow again a small maximum alcohol level (1-3 promille) in drivers' blood (currently 0, which leads to too many lawsuits disputing instrument accuracy). The 5th one (9,274 votes) wants to forbid all governmental and municipal officials to request photocopies of any documents from the citizens, and the 6th one (8,496 votes) wants to take away the rights for priority travel with blinking lights on the roads to everybody who currently hold them (i.e., mainly government officials) except for the emergency services (first-aid, police, firefighters).

Ilya Massukh claimed in the interview that especially the municipal officials
are happy with his project, and eager to get some input from citizens on what they need. So far however of the total of 484 open-for-voting initiatives there are only 14 municipal ones which attracted only a handful of votes (at most 131), and 38 regional ones (with at most 239 votes). So people concentrate their attention to the federation-wide problems. But it is only not even three weeks from the launch of the site, and it may take time before the knowledge about this initiative site spreads.

Mirek