Favrskov, a municipality in Denmark, has become one of the first to let residents file citizen proposals directly to the council. Since 1 April 2026, anyone aged 16 or over who lives there can create or back a proposal by logging in with MitID, the national digital ID. If a proposal gathers 900 supporters within three months, the council must take it up. Within weeks, nine proposals were live — one for an artificial bathing lake reached two-thirds of the threshold in six days.
What stands out is the mechanic. Local democracy is being given the logic of an app: log in, propose, rack up votes, hit a threshold, trigger an outcome — and the age of influence drops to 16. Participation stops being a four-year trip to the ballot box and becomes something lightweight you do from your phone between elections. As trust in big institutions wavers, the fix being tried is to make having a say feel as frictionless as everything else online.
So…:
Where could you lower the threshold for people to have a real say in what you do next?
Source: tv2ostjylland.dk
Picture: Niels Pedersen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)