Demokratiemaschine
A tool for local chapters & citizens’ initiatives · Pilot phase 2026

Motions
that don’t get lost.

A calm platform for the substantive work between party conventions. So that on convention weekend there’s time for what matters – and not for 150 motions in two days.

Become a pilot groupRead first, then decideFree during the pilot phase · No commitment

If you’re active in a local chapter or an initiative,
none of this is new to you.

01
Motions vanish at the national level.No one knows what became of them. Was it adopted, rejected, passed on – or simply never dealt with?
02
150 motions in two days, rushed through.Whoever worked on a motion for weeks gets five minutes of floor debate. Whoever speaks last wins – not whoever has the better argument.
03
Who can still check sources during the debate?On stage, numbers get thrown around; in the hall, people nod along. The loudest wins – not the one who is right.
04
Only the veterans notice duplicate resolutions.“We already covered that back in 2019 …” – if you haven’t been around for 20 years, you accidentally write the third motion on the same topic.
05
Whoever runs out of time simply drops out.Motions not dealt with for lack of time are gone. Several days of preparation down the drain. Nobody writes that down.

This is not an accusation against the party. It’s a structural problem that frustrates everyone involved – and one that a bit of tooling can solve.

Don’t replace the convention.
Make it better.

Demokratiemaschine does not replace the convention. It replaces the hectic, exhausting feeling before and after it.

The substantive engagement with motions shifts into a calm, asynchronous run-up. Arguments are collected and backed by sources. Amendments are discussed and consolidated in advance.

At the convention, time is then left for what conventions are actually good for: the truly contentious points – with people in the room, not with the minutes on your mind.

Beforeeverything on the weekend
With Demokratiemaschinedistributed

Same convention, same democracy. Distributed differently. Volume is replaced by substance – simply because there’s suddenly time for it.

Five tools that make your everyday work
noticeably lighter.

Motions that don’t get lost.

Every motion has a visible status – from “Submitted” to “Adopted at the national level”. You can also track what becomes of it when it gets passed on.

Arguments with substance.

Whoever puts forward a factual argument must cite a source. Whoever voices an opinion marks it as such. That makes debates more honest – and shorter.

Amendments with live preview.

Play through, before the vote, how the motion would look with different changes – no more confusion in the hall. This one tool we’re still finishing up.

A record of resolutions you can search.

Before you write a motion, you can see what already exists on the topic. Duplicate resolutions become rarer – even without 20 years of party memory.

A public page – with no CMS of your own.

Every committee gets a plain public page with a “report a concern” form. Citizens use it to bring in ideas that a motion can grow from – and you need no website of your own.

Concept draft · still in development
Motions / 2025-A-117 / Housing Initiative Mannheimupdated 3 days ago
Housing Initiative Mannheim — Affordable housing now
submitted by Social Affairs WG · Mannheim chapter · 12 Feb 2026
Submitted
12 Feb
Discussion
14 arguments · 3 amendments
Chapter
Vote 02 May
State level
July 2026
National level
open
Arguments · most recent
Fact
Rents in Mannheim have risen by 28% since 2019, while real wages rose by 4.2%.Source: Statistical Office of Baden-Württemberg, Housing Market Report 2025, p. 14
— L. Becker
Opinion
A municipal housing company is the right instrument for a city of our size.
— K. Yıldız
Fact
GBG Mannheim currently holds around 19,000 housing units – a stock that has stayed roughly constant since 2010.Source: GBG Annual Report 2024, p. 8
— M. Roth

Built by someone
who knows the problems first-hand.

I develop Demokratiemaschine on my own. I was active for several years as a local chapter chair – and I know the pain points described here not from a market analysis, but because too often on a Sunday evening I thought to myself: “There has to be a better way.”

I’m not building this because I went looking for a business idea. I’m building it because I would have needed this tool for my own work.

Politically neutral infrastructure. Demokratiemaschine is not a party platform and belongs to no party. It is infrastructure for democratic decision-making – like GitHub for code or Mattermost for chat. Any group, from a local party branch to a citizens’ initiative against a station redevelopment, can use it.
ReadyMotion tracker with status across chapter boundaries, arguments with mandatory sources, searchable record of resolutions, meetings with agendas, votes, stored studies, file storage per committee and public pages per organ – so that you no longer need your own CMS for requests from outside.
In progressLive preview for amendments: play through, before the vote, how a motion would look with different changes.
PlannedStatistics on un-dealt-with motions, anonymous sentiment polls – and a few more things that still need to mature.

What you get – and what we hope for.
Honestly, so it’s a good fit.

+ What you get

  • Free use throughout the entire pilot phase.
  • Personal support during setup. No hotline, no tickets – we talk to each other.
  • A say in deciding what gets built next.
  • A direct line to the people building the tool.

What we hope for

  • Honest feedback – even when something doesn’t work.
  • Patience during phases when not everything runs smoothly yet.
  • A willingness to really use the tool day to day, not just look at it once.
  • A contact person on your side we can talk to regularly.

· What it is not

  • Not a finished product. There will be things that are still missing or rough.
  • No guarantee that every wished-for feature gets built.
  • No self-service: you have to talk to us before getting started.
  • No sales pitch. If it’s not a fit, we’ll say so openly.

Political data belongs to political groups.
Not to us, not to third parties.

Hosting
Germany & EU
Legal framework
GDPR-compliant
Your data
Export anytime
Tracking
No third-party, no ads

Tell us briefly who you are
and what you need.

I’ll get back to you personally – no auto-responder, no sales tactics. If it’s not a fit, I’ll say so openly. That’s still better than a tool you don’t need.

“I’m not looking for logos for a website. I’m looking for groups that genuinely want to help build this.”
Prefer to write directly? hallo@demokratie-maschine.de
I’ll reply to you personally. No newsletter, no passing on to third parties.