Law Lifecycle
Principle
In the proposed system, no government body can block a law proposed by citizens. The process from idea to adoption is fully open, and filtering occurs through public interest (support threshold) rather than through officials' decisions. The entire process is recorded in the blockchain.
Lifecycle Stages
1. Initiation (Free Publication)
Any citizen can publish a law idea in free form.
What is required:
- Proposal title
- Brief description of the essence
- Proposal text (can be in free form — from an abstract idea to a detailed formulation)
- Author's cryptographic signature (GPG)
What is NOT required:
- Approval from any body
- A legally refined formulation
- Compliance with any templates
Automatic checks upon publication:
- ✅ Presence of required fields (title, description, text, signature) — blocking
- ✅ Duplicate check (uniqueness index) — advisory (see below)
- ✅ Formatting and legal correctness hints — advisory
- ✅ Conflict check — advisory
- ❌ Content review — not performed
Until the support threshold is reached, the publication is a proposal, not a law. Proposals can be freely ignored — they do not distract from the main voting process.
The submission is recorded as a blockchain transaction with a timestamp.
2. Collaborative Work and Amendments
After publication, the proposal enters the open development phase.
Mechanics:
- Any citizen can propose amendments to the text (similar to pull requests in Git)
- The author and community discuss and accept amendments
- Full version history — the current text and all previous versions are always available
- Each amendment is recorded in the blockchain with the author's name and timestamp
Automatic hints (advisory):
- Legal formatting — the system suggests better formulations
- Style — uniformity of language
- Potential contradictions with existing laws
Important: automatic hints cannot block the development of a proposal. They are exclusively advisory in nature.
3. Gathering Support
To proceed to voting, the proposal must gather support from a certain number of citizens.
Parameters:
- Support threshold: e.g., 5–10% of the total number of voters
- Each voter can simultaneously support a limited number of proposals (e.g., 3)
- Support is gathered continuously — a citizen can support a proposal at any time
- If support significantly exceeds the threshold, the waiting period may be shortened
Key rule: the support threshold is a filter of relevance, not censorship. The system asks: "Are enough people interested in this topic?" The electoral body has no right to block a proposal that has reached the support threshold.
All information about the current level of support is published daily.
4. Continuous Voting
After gathering support, the proposal becomes a question for decisive voting.
Mechanics:
- Each citizen can vote "for" or "against" at any time
- Voting occurs continuously
- Votes are weighted according to competency weights
- When a sufficient share of the electorate has voted (e.g., 60% accounting for weights), cumulative counting begins
- The difference between weighted "for" and "against" votes is calculated daily
- The difference accumulates until reaching the threshold (e.g., 1,850 EP)
5. Adoption or Rejection
- Adoption: accumulated EP "for" reaches the threshold → law is adopted
- Rejection: accumulated EP "for" drops to 0 → law is rejected
There is no time limit. Voting continues continuously until one of two outcomes is reached. If society has not decided — this is a normal state; the law remains under vote, and citizens continue changing their votes. The inertia mechanism ensures that a decision will only be made when society has formed a sustained position.
If an adopted law conflicts with existing laws, the conflict must be resolved before it takes effect. Details in the Conflict Resolution section.
6. Amendments After Adoption
After a law is adopted, citizens can initiate amendments to it through the same procedure:
- An amendment is submitted as a separate proposal referencing the existing law
- It goes through the same stages: publication → collaborative work → gathering support → voting
- Upon adoption of the amendment, the law is updated
- The complete history of changes is preserved in the blockchain
Uniqueness Index and Handling Duplicates
When a new proposal is published, an automated system calculates a uniqueness index — the degree of similarity with existing and previously rejected proposals.
Scenarios
| Uniqueness Index | Action |
|---|---|
| High (over 80%) | Publication without remarks |
| Medium (40–80%) | Recommendation: "Similar proposals already exist" with links |
| Low (under 40%) | Recommendation to submit as an amendment to an existing law |
| Full duplicate | Automatic rejection with suggestion to support the existing one |
If the Proposal Resembles a Previously Rejected One
If a new proposal contains elements of a previously rejected law but with changes:
- The system recommends submitting it as an amendment to an existing law
- The author can publish it as a new proposal, providing links to duplicates and describing the differences
- The uniqueness index is published alongside the proposal so citizens can consider the context when deciding on support
Blockchain Recording
At each stage of the lifecycle, the blockchain records:
| Stage | Recorded Data |
|---|---|
| Initiation | Proposal text, author, timestamp, signature |
| Amendments | Each amendment with authorship and timestamp |
| Support | Each support vote with signature |
| Voting | Each "for" / "against" vote with signature and weight |
| Result | Final status (adopted / rejected) |
| Post-adoption amendments | All subsequent changes |
Process Visualization
Idea → Publication → Collaborative Work → Gathering Support → Voting → Adoption
│ │ │ │ │ │
▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼
[blockchain] [blockchain] [blockchain] [blockchain] [blockchain] [blockchain]
Each step is transparent and verifiable. No stage can be skipped or falsified. No government body can block a proposal at any stage — filtering occurs exclusively through the will of the citizens.
Back: Weight Calculation ← | Next: Openness & Verification →