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Continue readingFinland Experiments With Citizen-Introduced Legislation
The online magazine Slate reports that Finland recently launched an open-source web platform called Open Ministry to allow citizens to propose legislation, which must be voted upon by Parliament if it receives the online attention of 50,000 citizens. "Each suggested law gets six months to gather traction. Whether the majority is in favor or not doesn’t matter, as anything with 50,000 total shares (likes or dislikes) moves on to the next, official round of voting. Two weeks ago, a proposal to ban the practice of farming animals for the fur trade became the first Open Ministry idea to pass the threshold for Parliament[ary] consideration. Out of the roughly 340 pitches currently on the site, the fur-trade idea is far and away the most popular, having collected more than 56,000 shares with the majority in favor of the ban."
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