San Francisco wants to let residents vote on the city’s budget online next year

The city of San Francisco wants to give its residents the ability to propose, debate, and vote on budget items online — now all it has to do is figure out how to bring this concept into reality. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and city Supervisor David Chiu announced at a conference this week that they’re working to create and test a system for what they call online participatory budgeting.

The two said the city wants to get something in place within the next year. But they also noted that while the idea is ambitious, it’s still in its earliest planning stages. The aim with all this, they said, is a simple one — using the internet to get more people involved in the democratic process.