To promote a desirable composition of a committee's members fund voting is adopted. The committee consists of five members, ABCDE. The fund voting begins with a proposal submitted by the departing committee, composed mostly of the departing members, i.e. ABCEF. The members of the society have conflicting views regarding various candidates, and their opinions are diverging as regards the representation of women, men, young, aged, as well as experienced and inexperienced individuals in the committee. More proposals are submitted, first the proposal ABCEG. A fund voting is applied where the last one receives more points than the departing committee's proposal. Then there comes a proposal of H instead of G, and H receives less points. After that comes the proposal GH replacing EG, and so it continues. When the election board finds the opinion being sufficiently tried, the current composition is submitted for election and the members respond with yes, no or they abstain. If that composition is not approved, fund voting continues until the state is viewed sufficiently tried, and a new election is carried on.
Assume a municipality where the idea is to prepare in fund voting some subject fields that are then to be submitted for conclusion by traditional voting, i.e. for, against, abstain. The subject fields may be school, communications and social affairs. One of the fields is scrutinized and discussed which may show some disagreements finally. The disagreements are grouped and submitted for fund voting through an effective rotation. The subject field is then put on the shelf without a final conclusion. Then the other subject fields are handled in the same way. After this the fund voting for any of the subject fields is continued if there is a reason for it. Finally the subjects are submitted for conclusion by traditional voting.
The following is a description of an approach based on the experience gained by a fund voting project carried out in Skaftárhreppur Municipality (South Iceland). The project was prepared and carried out by the Democracy Center. The fund voting was general, i.e. all those on the voters´ list could participate. This fund voting project in Skaftárhreppur Municipality went on for one year. The first issue was presented in November 2009 and the last one in November 2010. In the first issues one could choose between using the Internet for delivering the votes offered or one could forward the ballot by mail. After the area was connected to the Internet all ballots were delivered that way. The issues voted on were as follows:
Democracy Center has for some time made efforts to initiate fund voting among MPs and deputy MPs on two separate issues, i.e. fisheries control and a master plan for the exploitation and protection of the country’s energy resources. The project has been presented to them in conversations, either individually or in pairs of two.
The Democracy Center carried out a Fund Voting project in Skaftárhreppur Municipality (South Iceland) in the period October 2009 - November 2010. The seven issues voted on were as follows: