Chile: Empowering all citizens in Maipu with electronic and online voting
The commune of Maipú in Chile, located in the Santiago province, is one of the most densely inhabited communities in the country.
In 2015, the commune of Maipú launched the “Tu barrio gana” project, which means ‘your neighborhood wins’. The purpose of this project was the advancement of the Maipú neighborhoods with some $550,000 in investments to be made in a variety of macro and micro neighborhood infrastructural projects. The projects were to be decided upon using two principles:
- Equal distribution of the projects by neighborhood;
- Allocation of resources according to the population distribution of the neighborhoods. In order to determine the allocation of public funds amongst the wide range of projects proposed by the commune (143 organizations submitted suggestions in 20 different forms), Maipú wanted to leverage citizen participation and empower citizens by making them part of the resource allocation process.
