Vote World Parliament
— democratic world parliament through a global referendum —
Nashville,
TN, USA—Billions of people want world peace more than anything else, yet common
knowledge says that this wish is a pipedream. But what if we devised a practical
way to hold a global referendum, and then collected a mandate from the human
species to establish a democratic world parliament (to criminalize war, among
other things)?
An NGO called Vote World Parliament (VWP) has developed a new portable ballot that makes it possible to hold an Internet-based global referendum. Anyone with a website can embed the portable ballot in their website to establish their own voting booth.
The
(English) global referendum ballot reads: “Do you support the creation of a
directly-elected, representative and democratic world parliament that is
authorized to legislate on global issues?” While VWP hopes for a strong
“yes” vote, we expect that our opponents will embed the voting booth on their
websites and ask their friends and supporters to vote “no.” So far, even before
the advent of the uploadable voting booth, VWP had received about 21,500 votes,
and 94% of these people voted “yes” to this possible new future for humankind.
VWP’s minimum goal is two
billion votes, which amounts to about one half of the adult population of Earth
(“adult” meaning at least 16 years old). If 67%+ of these are “yes” votes, we
will consider the global mandate to be legally binding under international law
and politically compelling even i
f
it is not generally accepted as legally binding.
To see the portable ballot on a website, go to www.LifeProfilesBooks.com and click on the graphic link. These graphic links are available in 53 languages (via Google Translate; see http://voteworldparliament.org/shadowbox/getballot.html). For detailed instructions on how to embed the voting booth, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAiE-wIsU7U or www.voteworldparliament.org/votingboothinstructions.pdf. There are four small icons on the bottom of the ballot, for Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in and Blogger. The ballot installs in these applications automatically if you click on the appropriate icon and then log into your account.
Our ballot has been tested on the top four Internet browsers—Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Once a person has voted, the vote count advances on the local site as well as in the overall tally at Vote World Parliament (www.voteworldparliament.org).
It
could take up to a decade to complete the Internet-based referendum, although it
may never have to be completed! Our goal is to conclusively prove that the human
race is in favor of such a bedrock political renewal, and once that is clear, we
hope to hand off the global referendum to the United Nations. We have a draft UN
resolution that calls on all Member States to hold a national referendum (using
the VWP ballot) in conjunction with their next elections (www.voteworldparliament.org/allies-initiatives/draft-un-resolution/)
so that national resources such as official national voters lists and
scrutineers can be used to prevent tampering with the global referendum results.
(If Canada, for instance, decided to run the global referendum ballot in tandem
with its next national election, votes from Canadian citizens cast previously,
in the online referendum, would be nullified.)
So far, 123 published
authors (http://voteworldparliament.org/allies-initiatives/authors-campaign/)
have endorsed this initiative, and dozens of NGOs have already committed t
o
uploading the “voting booth” to their websites. It’s a modest beginning, but as
Lao Tzu once advised: “Do the difficult things while they are
easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles
must begin with a single step.”
We want to see the global referendum go viral on the Internet, and with the invention of our new voting booth device, we are optimistic about our chances of success.
* * *
For further information, including the email address(es) of any particular supporting author(s) that interest you, contact Ted Stalets (VWP Co-President) at ted@voteworldparliament.org or at 615-585-3294, or Jim Stark (VWP Founder and Co-President) at voteworldparliament@webruler.com or 819-647-6113.