Your Party

Service update

We're having a few 'day one' teething problems with our new website. Many apologies to all. We're working on it.

Your Party is launched today

Press release, 15 March 2004:

Your Party – www.yourparty.org - is launched today

Your Party (www.yourparty.org) - a new online political party - is launched today and announces its intention to field candidates in the forthcoming European elections.

The party is based on the principles of democracy and genuine popular involvement. Members will choose all candidates and make all policy decisions. Issues before the House of Commons, European Parliament or local government will be voted on by the membership. Party representatives must then vote in accordance with the party's decision.

Membership is open to everyone at the party's website, www.yourparty.org. Members will be entitled to vote on party policies, put forward their own policy proposals and register to stand as candidates in European and other elections.

The party will be non-ideological, and will assess every issue on its merits. By steering clear of the adversarial conflict, endemic in British politics, members will be able openly to discuss and scrutinize every issue. Your Party believes that this process will lead to better-informed, more effective and more democratic decision-making and policies.

Your Party was formed by Dan Thompson, Rod McLaren, Simon Morris and Liz Morris in January 2004 - as a way of addressing increasing public apathy and disillusionment towards mainstream politics, harnessing the rising popularity of single-issue campaigns and capitalising on the increasing impact of the internet on politics.

Thompson, McLaren and Simon Morris previously worked together at 365 Corporation, which was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1999 and rapidly built up more than 3 million users a month for its websites.

Thompson stated "Election turnouts may be falling but it's not like people stopped caring about political issues. Huge numbers of ordinary people are going on marches, joining organisations and taking local action on causes they care about. We want to give everybody a political party that focuses on their concerns and lets them take the decisions."

McLaren adds: "Millions of people in the US, and elsewhere in the world, are using the internet to get more involved with organisations such as MoveOn.org. (a network of 1,700,000 online activists in the US) and the Howard Dean web campaign. The internet's a fantastic tool for giving people the chance of genuine involvement and a real say."

"Your party aims to have the biggest membership of any political party in Britain within 5 years. Joining other political parties can mean knocking on doors and delivering leaflets. With Your Party you can be an MEP in June and an MP next year and you have a say on every single issue" said Simon Morris.

Liz Morris says "As a mother with a young child, and I'm sure it's the same for every busy person, it's virtually impossible to get involved in traditional politics. I love the idea of a party where I can go online at a time that suits me and have a voice and a vote on the issues I care about."

Thompson concludes "We believe that politics should be about arriving at the best possible decisions - about how to provide great health care and how to cut crime; not about who said what when".

For more information contact: Liz Morris on 07837 137 143 or media@yourparty.org.

Notes To Editors

These notes are divided into 3 sections:

A - Background statistics
B - Your Party's aims
C - Founders' biographies

A – Background statistics:

Voter Turnout

(Source: The Electoral Commission: Public Opinion and the 2004 Elections)

• June 2001 General Election – 59.4% of electorate (lowest since 1918);
• Only 24% of electorate actually voted for the Labour Party in 2001
• European Elections – turnout fell from 36.4% in 1994 to 24% in 1999; projected to fall to 19% in 2004
• GLA Elections – 33% turnout.

Attitudes to politics and politicians

• Only 20% of people trust government to ‘tell the truth' (MORI)

Mass involvement in single issues/campaigns

• "This apparently accelerating trend away from participation in the institutions of democracy contrasts with what seems to be a growing tendency for people to make their voice heard through participation in various forms of direct action rather than through the ballot box." - (Electoral Commission - ‘Election 2001: the official results')
• Countryside Alliance London Rally 2003 - 407,791 protesters (Source: Police & Countryside Alliance – they operated an agreed count method.)
• Stop the War Coalition anti-war march (14/02.03)– Estimates range from 750,000 (police) to 2,000,000 (organisers)
• RSPCA Membership: 450,000 donors. (RSPCA – estimates)
• Student Fees Protesters - On 27 Oct 2003 between 10,000-31,000 protesters rallied in London against top-up fees. (N.B. the Met claim the number was 10,000 and the NUS claim it was closer to 31,000)

Internet as a means of mass involvement

• Howard Dean supporters – grew from an organisation of 432 supporters to in excess of 200,000; raised $45m in campaign finance faster than any other political party in US history. (Source: www.headshift.com)
• Moveon.Org – Nationwide network of >1,700,000 online activists has contributed more than $2m to key Congressional campaigns during 2000 election.
• Philippines – 'People Power II' campaign saw hundreds of thousands of people mobilised against the former President, through an internet and SMS campaign. (Source: http://wireless.itworld.com/4273/CW_1-31-01_it/page_1.html)
• HEDRA research – 50%+ of young people would be more likely to vote if they could do so via the internet; (http://www.e-democracy.gov.uk);
• ICM research – 40% of young people would spend more time considering party policies and candidates if they could do so via the internet; (http://www.e-democracy.gov.uk)

B - Your Party's Aims:

Your Party aims to help you get involved in a way that actually results in positive change. If you've ever wanted your political representatives to listen to you, or got frustrated with the 'political system', or simply wanted to help, then Your Party is for you.

It aims to:

• Gain proper representation for you – our goal is to have the first representatives that are directly controlled by the citizens. (We are planning to put candidates forward for the European Elections in 2004.)
• Generate new ideas and solutions from informed and constructive debate. These will go to all party participants and, once approved, will be supported and promoted by Your Party.
• Involve you in the political and governmental system, and give you the information and tools to get the best out of them. Our website will develop to give you what you need - from the right number to call at your local council to the tools to create a petition to be signed by hundreds of thousands of people.

Ultimately - and we know how idealistic this sounds - we hope that by involving people in the political process we can contribute positively to society and people's lives.

C - Founders' Biographies:

Dan Thompson has a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse. His career in business encompassed music (Sanctuary Music and Rhythm King Records); video and computer games (Renegade Software and Time Warner Interactive); and internet and telecoms (365 Corporation). In 2001 Dan retired from full-time business to focus on his charity and cause interests.

Rod McLaren is an artist and internet/mobile consultant. He led the product design and delivery teams at 365 Corporation and Eckoh Technologies.

Simon Morris is a businesssman with a background in media and marketing. His career has involved working for Virgin, SEGA, BSkyB, Ginger and 365 Corporation. He lives in London with his wife and 3 children.

Liz is at home looking after her 18 month old daughter and is currently studying for an Environmental Postgraduate degree. Her background is an English Literature degree from Cardiff University and 10 years UK and International marketing experience in the character licensing and interactive games businesses. She has worked for Warner Bros. Consumer Products, Time Warner Interactive & Accolade.

Your Party's new website

We'll be launching our new website on Monday 15 March.

We have been undertaking consultative surveys with you on how to take the party forward and our general approach to Europe. The latest is on Your Party, Marketing & MEP Candidates. (Our surveys are hosted by You Gov.)

And some coverage today:

• The Telegraph has a piece on YP today: It's Your Party and you can log on if you want to (registration may be required).
• And the Sunday Times' Atticus mentions YP briefly.

Survey: Your Party, Marketing & MEP Candidates

The latest Your Party survey is on Your Party, Marketing & MEP Candidates. (Our surveys are hosted by YouGov, an online research and polling company.)

Survey: The European Union & The Party Constitution

Take our new survey and help to create the framework for the party's approach to Europe (Our surveys are hosted by YouGov, an online research and polling company).

We need volunteers

Interested in volunteering?

Please e-mail us at info@yourparty.org and tell us how you'd like to help. (There's a list of areas where help is needed at the bottom of this page.)

Interested in meeting fellow Your Party volunteers?

If you live in the London area then join us every Monday evening at Smiths of Smithfields (67-77 Charterhouse Street, Smithfield, map here) from 8.00pm to find out more about Your Party and how you can be involved (please email us if you're coming along so we can look out for you). If you live outside the London area but would like to host or attend such a meeting the please e-mail us at info@yourparty.org.

Interested in setting up and/or working for regional Your Party groups outside the London area?

We need to start building Your Party as a national organisation and are looking for individuals to build and/or work on Your Party in all the key regions of the country. If you'd like to help then please e-mail us on info@yourparty.org.

Interesting in joining the Your Party discussion group?

You can also join the Your Party People discussion group, which is hosted by Yahoo Groups. (If you have a Yahoo email address it's super-easy to join, if not you'll have to fill in a bit more info).

All people and ideas welcome, though please note we are not using this list in order to determine Your Party's position and policy on political issues.

Interested in how our first volunteers meeting went?

On 9th February we hosted our first volunteers meeting and were very encouraged by the number of attendees and their commitment to helping build Your Party. The meeting began with a brief presentation, followed by Q&A and one-on-one discussions. We now have active volunteers in a number of areas from technology to membership to campaigning. If you'd like to attend such a meeting then please e-mail us on info@yourparty.org

However, we have a huge amount of work to do and still need more volunteers in these and the other areas:

Campaigns
The party recently confirmed its decision to enter the European elections on June 10th 2004. We are looking for a Campaign Manager for the election and people to help with all aspects of campaigning.

Membership
The Membership Department will be responsible for growing the membership (and providing the members with support once they have joined the party). We are looking for people in all parts of the country to help with this work. If you're part of a network of any sort then we'd also love to hear from you.

Marketing and PR
The Marketing and PR team will work closely with the Campaigns and Membership teams to increase awareness, membership and votes. While coverage in the national media is vital, we also want to ensure that we cover local media and marketing opportunities.

Technical
The intelligent and user-friendly application of technology lies at the heart of Your Party. We need a wide range of technical skills to help implement this.

Fundraising
We need a Head of Fundraising as well fundraising assistance at every level. All and any help will be invaluable!

Editorial and Research
The editorial and research team will provide content and research for the site including discussions, voting processes and information on the candidates. We are also looking for moderators and experts in all key policy areas.

Legal
We need help with a number of areas - from drafting the constitution to ensuring that we are complying with all the relevant registration and legal requirements to running the party in the best possible way.

If you'd like to help us with any of the above - or indeed any other area - then please contact us at info@yourparty.org. All help will be enormously appreciated and we hope it will be prove to be an exciting opportunity for everyone!

Volunteer meeting, London, 9 Feb 2004

If you would like to volunteer to help - or you're simply interested in learning more about Your Party - then join us at our first Volunteers Meeting on the evening of Monday February 9th in Central London. Please e-mail Liz Morris at lizATmokita.co.uk for your invitation. If you'd like to attend such a meeting but can't make central London then please e-mail us with your details as we are aiming to set up a series of meetings around the country.

Several ways to approach 'Membership'

This is an web version of a working document on membership. It sets out the requirements for membership, which pretty much boils down to: "for important activities like voting on policy, how do we ensure that its 1-human-1-vote?". You can make suggestions in the comments at the bottom, and we'll read them all.

- - -

R. McLaren

Status: DRAFT, 29 Jan 2004

Contents of this document:
1. Note on this document
2. Introduction (What is membership?)
3. Requirements
4. Implementation options
4.1. Credit-card billing
4.2. Electoral roll
4.3. Driving licences, passports and NI numbers
4.4. Mobile phone
4.5. Biometrics
4.6. Yahoo-style membership
5. Open issues, questions, and other notes
6. Recommendation and conclusion

1. Note on this document

This is itself an experiment in “open” design. I’ve tried to write this so that it can be read and commented on by reasonably non-technical people. This document doesn’t look in any detail at other requirements outside of membership, such as the mechanism for voting, or discussing etc.
It’s not finished.

Comments, suggestions and improvements are welcomed, though at the end of the day a decision will have to be made, which will probably have to be somewhat dictatorial. Apologies for that in advance.

How to comment: at the moment, there isn’t a single editable document on a system like a wiki, so I will attempt to coherently collate any responses sent to info@yourparty.org, or to the volunteers list (yourpartypeople@yahoogroups.com) or in comments on the blog site. If you comment, I’ll try to cite you accurately.

Rod McLaren / rodmcl & yahoo , com

2. Introduction (What is membership? Why?)

Your Party is an online political party, whose members take policy decisions by voting. There are also additional activities (such as discussion, debate, etc, etc) for which it would be very useful/essential to have confidently-identified members. We have stated that we will accept anyone who is a UK national (whether resident or not) or a UK resident as a member.

The underlying principle of Your Party voting and representation is 1-human-1-vote, so we need to ensure that members are identified correctly. Every member must be a unique human, and no human should be able to adopt the identity of an additional unique human.

To achieve this, we need to prove that a user (member) is a human being and that they are entitled to use that particular human identification. We need to do this to avoid two common types of fraudulent membership (and therefore voting):
· Alice “steals” Bob’s identity so she can make two votes. This kind of fraud is serious but its impact is relatively small: Alice can vote twice, Bob can’t join the party, and Your Party might have a bad PR story.
· Alice generates thousands of new and unique identities by generating thousands of unique email addresses (or whatever electronic identifier number the system uses). This kind of fraud is serious and its impact is potentially massive: Alice can then vote as many times as she has “identities”, so Your Party actually becomes Alice’s Party, and Your Party has a bad PR story about vote hijacking.

In both of these fraudulent cases Alice would have successfully identified herself as a unique individual, but as she wasn’t required to prove that she was who she claimed to be, she was able to cheat the system. So we need to authenticate a user as a particular human.
This system aims to be at least as secure and accurate as that (the electoral roll) underpinning elections in the UK.

There will also be a second type of authenticated identity on Your Party: that asked for when members log in to the site. We merely need to know their Your Party identity and we need some proof that they are the member that they say they are. A unique username and the corresponding password should be enough.

To summarise:
· to become a member, you need to inform Your Party of your real-world identity and prove that it is yours (example: name and address; and proof of that address)
· to log-in to the site thereafter, you need to give Your Party your Your Party identity and prove that you are the member that you claim to be (example: a unique member name; and a password)

3. Requirements

We need to design and implement an online membership scheme that satisfies certain security requirements:

1. clearly and uniquely identifies users to the site (and each other) when they participate
2. ensures one man, one vote
3. prevents (to a reasonable degree) fraudulent voting
4. collects information that will be legally required or required in order to participate in certain activities (eg Your Party may need to know where the user lives in order to meet Electoral Commission reqs)

There are also some requirements that aren’t specifically about identifying individuals, but are be required for voting, “user-friendly” or other purposes:

5. after the user has become a Member, logging-in should be quick and easy for them
6. the user should be able to get a reminder if they forget their password (and perhaps any other information that we’ve asked them to choose, with the exception [for security reasons] of financial details)
7. forename, surname (we should ask for this because, as the BBC’s iCAN put it, it encourages people to commit to their positions, and consider their words, and to keep criticism constructive)
8. user’s location (may be useful or legally required for voting purposes)

And finally, some “Your Party-friendly” requirements:

9. possibly some other useful information (this could be optional for the user)
10. The scheme should be low-cost, and relatively easy to support and maintain for Your Party

At this time, the scheme is not required to work across multiple platforms: users can only register as a Member on the website.

4. Implementation options

Some of the options below authenticate the user against their residential (or residential billing) address. We make the assumption that credit-card companies/banks or the electoral roll are “trusted sources” for this information. Similarly, there are other trusted sources such as the passport agency (for passports), the DVLA (for driver’s licences) and gov??? (for NI numbers).

4.1: residential billing address (the Credit-Card option)

We ask for the usual email address etc, plus: credit-card (or debit-card) details in order to authenticate the user and to take the membership fee. If the transaction doesn’t validate, they can’t become a member. Level of membership fee to be decided (Labour is £24, Cons: £15, LibDem: £5. So £5 max? Also look at micro-transactions: sub £1)

· What data do we collect? What data do we store?
-- Forename, surname, email address, password, (password reminder question and answer). [this will henceforth be referred to as the standard information]
-- Credit-card/Debit-card number, expiry date, name on card, security number, (issue number and date), billing address incl postcode.
-- Store what?: Store CC number as one-way encrypted? What else do we store? DPA issues?
· What does it require?
-- Deal and implementation for a merchant account with eg Worldpay
· Advantages
-- Could raise funds for eg election deposits
-- Fraud is expensive, therefore unlikely
-- Can perhaps mitigate the barrier to entry by making membership fee low?
· Disadvantages
-- Access: Members need a CC or DC to become a member
-- CC details are a barrier to entry (nervousness about what we may use them for)
-- Merchant account deal and implementation may be costly and slow us down
-- DPA compliance will slow us down and involve lawyers (however DPA probably an issue for all options)
-- Doesn’t work well for under-18s
-- What is the worst thing that could happen?: Alice can vote three times if she has 3 cards registered at 3 separate addresses. (However it is impossible for her to register thousands of times without both funds and cards that are registered at different addresses.)

On raising funds: if we did collect a small membership fee, we should make it very clear what it is to be used for. Eg: raising funds to pay deposit fees, rather than something vague like “running the party”.

An alternative is not to charge a membership fee – to use the CC to authorise the user’s identity but cancel the transaction.

4.2: residential address (the electoral roll option)

We ask for the usual email address etc, plus: name, house name or number, and postcode. We then see if the name-and-address is in a name/address database (these are supplied by data aggregation companies like AFD, QAS and Capscan, who buy electoral roll data from local councils, and then clean and de-duplicate the data), try full address if there’s no match, and fail the user if there’s still no match.

Nb: this method doesn’t prove that the person at that address unless we send something to them and ask them to post proof of address.

· What data do we collect? What data do we store?
-- Standard information, plus: house number, postcode. Should work in 90% of cases. Fail back to full address, so may ask for this too.
-- Store what?: …
· What does it require?
-- Deal and implementation for an name/address data source, such as AFD.
· Advantages
-- Mapping users against an electoral roll data source may make a lot of sense!
-- lower barrier to entry than with CC?
-- No cost to user
-- Should work for under-18s
· Disadvantages
-- The name/address data sources can be up to 12-18 months out of date
-- Anyone who opts out of the marketing provisions under the UK People’s Act will not appear in the data
-- If you’re not in the data source, you can’t become a member. The underlying address data (from the post office) is about 95%, but name data (which comes from the electoral roll and other sources) is perhaps 70-80% accurate.
-- Data source deal and implementation may be costly and slow us down
-- Users can register as multiple people unless we actually post them something (cost!) to make sure that they respond from that address
-- Data Protection Act compliance will slow us down and involve lawyers (however DPA is probably an issue for all options)
-- Doesn’t work (practically) for non-UK-residents
-- What is the worst thing that could happen?: The people that have moved house in the last 18 months might not be able to become members; and people on the electoral roll in two locations can become a member twice.

4.3: driving licences, passports and NI numbers

[This is not necessarily a proposal to allow members to choose which one of the three to provide - I’m covering these in the single option, because they have the same disadvantages as far as I know]

We ask for the usual email address etc, plus: some proof of ownership of a passport, a driving licence or a NI number.

· What data do we collect? What data do we store?
-- Standard information, plus: passport number and expiry date, OR driving license number and expiry date, OR NI number
-- Store what?: …
· What does it require?
-- Relationship with a trusted source (passport agency / DVLA / gov???) to authenticate
· Advantages
-- Data is accurate
-- lower barrier to entry than with CC? (however, very large privacy concerns!)
-- No cost to user
· Disadvantages
-- It’s very difficult to authenticate: we would need real-time links to the trusted source [no idea yet whether this is at all possible, but it seems unlikely]
-- Massive DPA compliance issues potentially
-- None are ideal for under-18s, nor for non-UK-residents
-- What is the worst thing that could happen?: a nasty breach of DPA probably

4.4: mobile phone number

Usual details plus: we send an sms to the phone. The user types the information (in the sms) into the website.

Nb: this doesn’t prove that users have a current billing relationship with a trusted source (the mobile operator) because 50% of mobiles are pre-pay.

· What data do we collect? What data do we store?
-- Standard information, plus: mobile phone number.
-- Store what?: …
· What does it require?
-- Outbound sms delivery
· Advantages
-- Relatively simple for the user; possibly for Your Party too
-- lower barrier to entry than with CC? (however, privacy concerns?)
-- No cost to user
· Disadvantages
-- Sms delivery costs
-- Access: not everyone has a mobile phone
-- Registration can fail if sms delivery is slow
-- DPA compliance will slow us down and involve lawyers (however DPA probably an issue for all options)
-- Users can have multiple mobile phones
-- If a user changes their mobile number, or if two users share a single mobile number, or if old mobile numbers are recycled, we have a problem
-- What is the worst thing that could happen?: PR fallout from excluding people who haven’t got mobiles

4.5: biometrics

On paper, biometric solutions sound ideal for identifying individual humans. However, they’re expensive, and they don’t work.

4.6: Yahoo-style membership

We sign people up the same way that Yahoo do: ask for the usual email address etc, plus: we ask them to type in a word that appears in a computer-generated picture (a “captcha”). This step requires a human to eyeball the picture, so it discourages people using automated means to generate 1,000s or 100,000s of email addresses, but it doesn’t stop them from creating several or many identities if they’re inclined to take the time.

This method might be useful for a two-level membership scheme: use this for people who want to discuss etc, but require them to become full members (with voting rights)

· What data do we collect? What data do we store?
-- Pretty close to the standard information.
-- Store what?: …
· What does it require?
-- Fewer external suppliers
· Advantages
-- Simple for the user; possibly for Your Party too
-- Very low barrier to entry
-- No cost to user
· Disadvantages
-- Users can create hundreds of identities if they’re prepared to spend the time. Therefore more a PR disadvantage than a real (vote-affecting) disadvantage perhaps.
-- DPA compliance will slow us down and involve lawyers (however DPA probably an issue for all options)
-- What is the worst thing that could happen?: someone painstakingly creates 100 identities, and can therefore vote 100 times. However, If users are able to automate the captcha part of the signup, then there’s a risk of a massive number of fraudulent IDs being created.

5. Open issues, questions, and other notes

IP addresses:
Probably record IP address as part of the user authentication method. For most authentication options?

Storing data:
In principle, we want to store as little user data as possible, in order to minimise security risks DPA issues, cost of data maintenance, etc. However, we do of course need to do hosting (and related security) well.

Sampling and Auditing:
It has been suggested that sampling may make it more effective to use different authentication methods that were previously expensive for the organisation though low-barrier for the member. Instead of authenticating every user, we’d authenticate a sample of them. Auditing and sampling can be very effective at identifying fraud. Disadvantage: the identification scheme can be criticised for not being accurate. DPA compliance?

Age:
We haven’t nailed down whether there are age limits to membership. If we accept under-18s as members, then verifying their identities is difficult because (a) they don’t have credit cards and (b) occasionally you have two individuals with the same name at the same address, (c) etc.

Addresses:
How do we authenticate UK nationals who aren’t residents? Using residential address is impractical, as we’d need address data globally. Credit-card is less impractical. Alternatively, look at whether the terms make sense: perhaps members need to be UK residents? – especially if we end up linking voting rights to geographic constituencies [this will no doubt come up in the planning for the party constitution]

Multi-level:
We should also look at registering users on two levels so that there’s a lower barrier to discussing, debating etc, and a higher one for voting.

Choice:
Do we let users pick which authentication method they’re most comfortable with? Disadvantage: complexity and length (cost) of development time

6. Next steps, and recommendation

Next steps are:
get feedback, scope out (budget) a recommendation, and build.

Recommendation:
Still working on this, but I currently lean towards the credit-card option for its balance of accuracy with fund-raising. However, even though the idea of a two-tier membership may address some of its barriers-to-entry, it is recognised that it is not ideal for attracting membership. Name and address also looks like a good option.

Looking for volunteers

Want to volunteer to help Your Party? We want to hear from technical people, designers, writers, marketing experts - everyone. If you're interested, then email us. You can also join our Your Party People email list, which is hosted by Yahoo groups. (If you have a Yahoo email address it's super-easy to join, if not you'll have to fill in a bit more info).

All people and ideas welcome, though please note we are not using this list in order to determine Your Party's position and policy on political issues.

Survey: the name, voting basics, and elections

We've set up a new survey which looks at some of the issues facing the party. It's not part of the formal decision-making process – we won’t have that in place until the party launches in late February - but it is an important part of the consultative process as we try to get it right.

The original survey is still online. It's about your attitudes to internet democracy and politics.

(Our surveys are hosted by YouGov, an online research and polling company.)