Voting is a core tool in a functioning democracy, but it is now in desperate need of improvement. This long read proposes a major reform intended to deal with these problems: The Citizens Election Forum.

Voting is an essential tool of democracy that has become increasingly fragile and in great need of improvement. Modern methods of voter manipulation date back, at least, to the advent of focus groups in the 1980s. Perhaps the most notorious example from that era is the 1988 Willie Horton ad, a result of focus groups’ advice to Republicans on how best to arouse the emotions of swing voters in the United States. In the early 2000s, microtargeting at the national level developed into a sophisticated tool. Currently, we see voters swayed by social media, with its emotional and short-term thinking, and open to manipulation from foreign nations and clever bloggers around the world.

The impact of social media on voting has created a whole new game of politics. It is the most influential medium for voters today, far surpassing even television advertising. This content is highly stimulating, especially through the use of videos and/or images which arouse a variety of emotions: humor, anger, patriotism, race, etc. Tribalism is a problem with social media as well—users find other ‘friends’ who are like them ethnically, socially, economically and politically.

This piece outlines a major proposal to improve voting. Its goals are to reduce polarization, help voters make more informed choices and open the possibility of a focus on the long-term needs of society. For now, I shall refer to this as the Citizens Election Forum. This major reform was first proposed in my book Healthy Democracy.

Three recent papers give me hope that the time may be right for the CEF to be implemented. Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave, a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, focuses on the widespread use of Citizens Juries and citizens’ assemblies (hereafter, assemblies). It summarizes successful assembly projects conducted in Ireland in 2016 and Germany in 2019, and the major assembly on global climate change completed in France this year.

The second paper, by the American Association of Arts and Sciences, is Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy in the 21st Century. This report is the result of two years’ work by a prominent group of scholars cochaired by Harvard professor Danielle Allen, Stephen Heintz, president and CEO of Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Eric Liu, CEO of Citizen University. This is another major report that originates outside the deliberative community and pays significant attention to the work of Citizens Juries and assemblies and efforts to empower voters. They look to a ‘fourth founding’ of our democracy, a follow up of the ‘third founding’ that took place within the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century. I believe sections of their report can serve as a springboard for major fundraising needed for the CEF.

The third paper that offers hope is Australia’s Democracy: A Strategic Roadmap for Renewal, published by Citizens for Democratic Renewal. Author Mark Triffitt says:

‘Time is running out’ is an often-used phrase to make the case for urgent action in important areas of public policy. But in relation to the deepening problems with Australia’s democracy, this is the stark truth. If the public standing of our democratic system—which relies intrinsically on the people’s trust and engagement to maintain its legitimacy—continues to decline at the rate we have seen over the last decade, the reality is that we will reach a point of no return within 10 to 15 years. In other words, public trust in our political system will become so degraded and irreversible that we will reach a tipping point where no reform—regardless of its nature or scope—will restore its functionality or representativeness.

The Citizens Election Forum

The best way to introduce the CEF is to quote from Healthy Democracy. Why bother quoting an old book of mine? Because the book had good suggestions. The most successful proposal was for the Citizens Initiative Review to evaluate ballot initiatives. This was adopted into state law in Oregon in 2011 and is now internationally recognized. I believe the time is at hand to resurrect the most important proposal of the book.

What is needed is for us to be able to make representative democracy work properly—that is what the CEF intends to do. It is the major reform proposed in this book. In outline form:

• The goal of the CEF is to help citizens do a wiser job of voting for the governor of a state.
• It is based on the most successful Citizens Jury® projects conducted by the Jefferson Center. The League of Women Voters played a key role in these projects, which were run from 1989 to 1994.
• Like those Citizens Jury projects, it enables average citizens to evaluate candidates on their stands on three or four critical issues facing the state.

Unlike Citizens Jury projects, the CEF proposes discussions of issues that are more in-depth and take place every year, rather than being linked only to specific statewide elections. If the CEF works as intended, it will give the voters in a state a much greater say over who gets elected governor compared to what they now have. Everyday citizens will be given considerable power over which issues get discussed during a campaign, as opposed to issues being selected by the media, with its concerns about increasing its audience, or by candidates, with their desire to win.

If the Citizens Election Forum works as intended, it will give the voters in a state a much greater say over who gets elected governor compared to what they now have.

The current version of the CEF has the same goals as the earlier version. Americans need help in overcoming the deep divisions in society and in finding agreement on key policies that will be effective in the long term. Those who have found common ground then need to vote for candidates who will carry out their proposals.

The quote from 2003 focuses on a gubernatorial race, because the CEF should be launched in a statewide project, even though it is intended to be used ultimately for the US presidential election. No specific state is mentioned here for launching the project, but that clearly will be an important consideration.

The 2003 version relied on Citizens Juries to create the microcosms of the public, since the assembly was not created until 2004. The use of a larger method (160 participants rather than 24) gives the participants a much better opportunity to take a close look at issues and candidates. It is also likely to be seen as more legitimate by the voting public, given the diverse group of participants who are assembled. It will be seen as ‘more like us’ than is possible with only the 24 people of a Citizens Jury.

Conducting the CEF

The new CEF will be conducted in two phases over a period of four years leading up to a gubernatorial election. The first two years will be conducted as research, giving a microcosm of the public an opportunity to examine the method closely and form an opinion regarding its possible implementation in their state. As research, this can be funded by tax-deductible donations, including foundation grants.

This research phase will also give potential major donors a chance to see it in its initial stages and decide whether or not they would like to fund the final two years, which will operate as a campaign requiring ‘hard’ money that is not tax-deductible.

The first phase will cost around US$20 million to cover the costs of two assemblies and the necessary outreach and polling that will be done. If the participants decide at the end of the second year that the CEF should be implemented in a campaign mode, they may well decide to make this recommendation contingent on the likelihood of funding in the range of US$50 million. (A national assembly will cost about US$7 to 8 million. The additional costs are for outreach, which could amount to more than US$50 million if the sponsors are willing to provide it.) While this is a huge amount compared to the funding available now, it is a pittance in terms of what is needed in finding a method to promote wise voting.

The first goal of the research phase will be to ascertain that the participants can work together effectively to find common ground on specific current issues and long-range goals for their state. They will need to examine some key issues and decide if they can agree on criteria for evaluating the character and abilities of political candidates. Although the staff will set the agenda for the first-year assembly, participants will have to set the agenda for the second-year assembly as their last task. It is even possible that the original set of participants will decide against recommending the project to go forward.

The agenda I recommend for the first assembly will aim to give them a wide range of experiences. Given the large number of participants, it will be possible for them to examine several different things, working in committees the size of the original Citizens Juries of 24 people. For example, they could be given the opportunity work in committees to examine:

• The deep challenges of democracy
• Current issues (two to four) that get a lot of attention
• Long-range issues (one or two) such as education, infrastructure or the future of jobs
• The character and abilities of candidates
• The current state budget, in depth, and the taxes that support it
• The appointment of a process committee to monitor the project itself to ensure it is run in a fair way and not biased by staff or influenced by funders

One of the most important results of the CEF may not come from the work of some specific committee, but from the reduction of polarization among the participants. During breaks and lunch hour, participants will get a chance to know each other in an informal way. The opportunity to meet others completely outside their usual range of friends and contacts is one of the most effective ways to break down the stereotypes that divide our society. Decades of experience with Citizens Juries and assemblies have shown how successful this can be in helping people find common ground with others whom they initially distrusted.

If the CEF can help members of a state to get to know each other outside their immediate spheres of influence, that alone will be a major accomplishment.

Assuming this occurs, one key question is whether this reduction in polarization can be conveyed effectively to the public. One of the main goals during the research phase will be to find ways to convince the public to trust the method and begin to reduce polarization within the state as a whole. If the CEF can help members of a state to get to know each other outside their immediate spheres of influence, that alone will be a major accomplishment.

Another anticipated aspect of the CEF is that tension may arise between those examining current or long-term issues and the challenges of democracy. Will the participants want to focus more on influencing the next election rather than taking steps for major changes? As early as the fourth of the six meetings, those in different committees may choose to spend less time on their committee assignments and more time talking with each other about the possible tension between the orientations. (More will be said about this below in the section ‘Three Orientations.’)

Only time will tell whether the effect of the CEF will be major or modest. If we are stuck in a decadent society, as hypothesized by Ross Douthat, the effect will surely be modest. If it is a key tool in mobilizing the understanding and commitment that Robert Reich deems necessary to save our democratic system, its effect will be major. (These disparate views are discussed later.)

In its modest form, the CEF may be a factor in swinging votes between the Republicans and Democrats, with the majority of the voting public adhering to the party affiliations that currently exist. However, it could be a key element in changing party affiliations, leading those who now identify as independents to act on that identification, possibly creating a third party or implementing ranked-choice voting on the national level to give political viability to several new parties.

This version of the CEF is not as easy to grasp as the earlier version, which simply focused on issues as they emerged during an election year. That version assumed a modest impact on elections. This new form gives a microcosm of the public a much better chance to explore long-term options or even systems change. It will be enlightening to see whether the participants focus on methods to evaluate candidates based on their qualifications and stands on issues in the current game of politics, or whether they see a need to urge voters to take steps in order to change the game itself.

A crucial aspect of the CEF is building trust with voters. When the Jefferson Center projects were conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they were run as joint projects with the League of Women Voters, which gave them immediate credibility with a significant percentage of the public. The new CEF will face a challenge of gaining public trust. This will be accomplished partly by the process committee that is tasked to convince the participants that they are engaged in a project that is being conducted in a fair and transparent manner. Another part, however, will come from the polling that is done during the research phase. Which orientation of the three main ones presented below seems to generate the most interest and trust from the public?

This new form gives a microcosm of the public a much better chance to explore long-term options or even systems change.

The primary effort in gaining trust will have to be done through outreach to the broader public. A variety of events will be conducted around the state to explain the CEF thoroughly. Also, the project will need to develop a following on social media that includes the polling done to evaluate the effectiveness of those outreach efforts. The two years of research that comprise the first phase should be sufficient to assess whether the full CEF should be undertaken, and with what focus. Does it appear that the CEF can gain the trust of a significant percentage of the public? What aspects do people find more or less appealing? What kind of budget would likely be needed to move forward with success?

There are two reasons I believe a budget of something like $50 million will be needed for the campaign phase of the CEF. First, in many states, this is the amount spent on the gubernatorial election. If an informed voice of the people, something new to the voting public, is to have the power to shape the campaign in a significant way—rather than leaving that to the parties, the media and bloggers—a large amount of money will be needed for outreach. The second reason is the effort necessary to have the project taken seriously by the media and candidates. In the projects run by the Jefferson Center in the 1990s, we had to work really hard to get the candidates to attend hearings and be questioned in depth by the participants. A CEF funded at a high level will be something the media will not ignore and it will be an exercise that no candidate would dare avoid, if invited to be questioned.

Three Orientations

In the possible agenda previously noted, three orientations were listed for the participants to examine:

• Current issues (two to four) that get a lot of attention
• Long-range issues (one or two), such as education, infrastructure or the future of jobs
• The deep challenges of democracy

These could lead to very different recommendations to the public about voting. A focus on current issues is most in line with the original CEF. An emphasis on long-range issues is arguably better for a state, but may not engage the voters as much. A focus on deep challenges is almost certainly about system change, something which may be difficult for the participants to agree on, much less the voters. Let’s discuss each of these orientations.

• Current Issues. This is the approach most in line with gathering information relevant to a gubernatorial race. The challenge of this is that the current issues could change both in the research phase and the campaign phase. In this approach, the participants accept the political system largely as it is and simply try to help voters with issues relevant to the current election.
• Long-Range Issues. These are, in one sense, the most important. Clearly, some of the most important issues that need action cannot be fixed within a short period. But the memories of the public tend to be short, so something like a five- or ten-year effort to improve education may have little benefit to a candidate who must run for reelection every two or four years. Even US senators with six-year terms may not benefit from a strong stand to implement a long-range program.Using an example on what should be done to improve education, extensive research has shown that quality preschool education for at-risk children is one of the best investments that can be made to improve our schools (see National Institute for Early Education Research and Lessons from Research and the Classroom by Jim Minervino).Still, the implementation of these programs is very spotty among the states: New Jersey, for example, leads with about half of its at-risk children in these programs. When the Jefferson Center ran a small Citizens Jury in 1994 on at-risk children, it took four days before the participants started talking about ‘our’ children, as opposed to any willingness to invest in programs for ‘their’ children. Between the lack of empathy many Americans have for other people’s children and the need to invest in programs that may not show results for a decade or more, quality preschool education is a program that receives much lip service and with little concerted implementation.

  Large investments in infrastructure may fare better. Whether challenges to ensure decent job opportunities in the future can create a consensus over specific needs and how much to invest remains to be seen, a robust assembly on the future of jobs could possibly reduce polarization and lead to a call for significant investment in programs needed to prepare Americans for the jobs which will open up a decade from now.

• Deep challenges of democracy. A number of these could be considered. If this orientation has the strongest appeal to both the participants and the public and if there is agreement on what the key challenges are, the recommendation on how to conduct the campaign part of the CEF would focus on identifying candidates who believe major changes are needed to improve our democracy. Here are a few claims about the deep challenges to democracy:
  • The ‘deep state’ that President Donald Trump and his followers believe needs to be overcome. Trump’s claim is that only an outsider to government, someone as bold as he, can overcome the deep state that both President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were part of.
  • Tribalism. What has become of the social fabric that sustains our democracy? In 2017, Pew Charitable Trusts reported:

    The divisions between Republicans and Democrats on fundamental political values—on government, race, immigration, national security, environmental protection and other areas—reached record levels during Barack Obama’s presidency. In Donald Trump’s first year as president, these gaps have grown even larger.

    Amy Chua’s Political Tribes is one of the best books written on this topic. In it, she writes:

    At the core of American tribalism, however, is race. This has always been true, but the present moment is especially fraught. We are on the verge of an unprecedented demographic transformation, which will place intense strain on the social fabric.

  • Power of the four or five giant tech firms to mold society and reduce the effectiveness of democracy. This claim is being promoted with the new term ‘surveillance capitalism,’ which addresses the process of gathering personal data with the core purpose of profit-making. Since personal data can be commodified, it has become one of the most valuable resources on earth. The concept arose after advertisers saw the possibilities of using personal data to target consumers more precisely. Shoshana Zuboff, in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, claims that this is a largely uncontested new expression of power which constitutes hidden mechanisms of extraction, commodification and control that threatens the core values of democracy.A somewhat different version of this point of view is found in Robert Reich’s The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It.  In it, he says:

    Some policy victories can still be achieved within the system, and policy advocates must continue their hard work. But as wealth and power concentrate at the top, systemic change is becoming more urgent. Policy advocates have no hope of long-term success without the efforts of change insurgents who mobilize the public to protect democracy itself, and shift power from the oligarchy to the majority. It is not possible to respond to the nation’s or the world’s urgent problems without a fully functioning democracy, and democracy cannot be achieved unless power is reallocated.

  • Decadent Society. Ross Douthat wrote about this in The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success. A blurb from Simon and Schuster states:Today the Western world seems to be in crisis. But beneath our social media frenzy and reality television politics, the deeper reality is one of drift, repetition, and dead ends. The Decadent Society explains what happens when a rich and powerful society ceases advancing—how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemates, cultural exhaustion, and demographic decline creates a strange kind of ‘sustainable decadence,’ a civilizational languor that could endure for longer than we think.

This is important as a challenge to the possibility of making significant progress in changing the political system.

My dream would be for a group of large foundations to commit five percent of their assets to funding democratic reforms.

Funding

As noted above, my hope for funding democratic reforms is encouraged by the efforts of those who created the American Association of Arts and Sciences report. The report does not go into much detail but does say:

Implementing the six strategies and thirty-one tactical recommendations will require support from policy-makers, private philanthropy, business, educators, civil society leaders, and, of course, individual Americans. Many of the details will need to be debated and explicated in the months and years ahead. Progress will depend on the hard work of the many organizations, advocates, public officials, and civic leaders already working on similar solutions at the local, state, and national levels. Shining a light on that existing work will inspire others…

To properly support the civic one million, American philanthropists—and philanthropic foundations, in particular—will need to change their habits. Currently, philanthropic foundations spend only 1.5 percent of their collective grantmaking dollars on efforts to improve and reform democracy, and they allocate only a sliver of that meager slice of their money to supporting civic leaders. Foundations can and must do better to foster the civic one million and ensure that it is a cohort that captures the full breadth of American social diversity.

Whether statements like these will lead to a mobilization of major investments in democratic reforms remains to be seen, but they do offer hope at a time when the need is huge.

My dream would be for a group of large foundations to commit five percent of their assets to funding democratic reforms. In 2020, a number of foundations have already decided to increase their contributions from the five percent they normally give to 10 percent, in light of the COVID-19 crisis and the demonstrations for police reform. An additional five percent would mean an unprecedented increase in their charitable distributions.

Consider the example of Minnesota in the early 1970s. The Dayton brothers, managers of the Dayton-Hudson corporation, spearheaded a Five-Percent Club, in which corporate donors pledged five percent of their pretax profits to charity. Many large corporations joined that effort. Were such a group formed nationally today in the interest of democratic reforms, funding could increase by many billions.

But it must be noted that the campaign phase of the CEF will also require funds from wealthy individuals, which leads to an obvious question: why would any from this economic class join together to support democracy, rather than some ideology or interest of their own? The answer lies partly in idealism—a sound democracy is arguably the finest achievement of America. But it also lies partly in the pragmatic idea of long-term self-interest. If our democracy fails, a stable society may well be impossible. Those interested in preserving their wealth and the ability to pass it on to their descendants should care about preserving a stable democratic society.

Why would any from this economic class join together to support democracy, rather than some ideology or interest of their own?

Who might these individuals be? Some estimates claim that there are around 5,000 Americans with wealth of $100 million or more. An estimated 73,000 have $30 million or more. Contributions from only a couple of these people could raise the $10 million a year for the research phase of the CEF. And if the assembly demonstrates the overcoming of polarization in a unique way, it could provide motivation for other wealthy individuals to join the effort. If only 10 of the wealthiest Americans donated $5 million, the campaign phase of the CEF would be funded. (It should be noted that the more successful the CEF is, the more opposition it will create from those interest groups and parties that benefit most from the current system. In light of this, even more than $50 million may be needed.)

By now, some readers may be thinking that this is a utopian proposal. Why should such a high-minded group of wealthy individuals, well-read on the challenges faced by democracy, ever come together to make it work? I grant that it is a long shot. But if someone in 1770 had posited that a relatively small group of people would come together in America to start a revolution against the most powerful nation in the world and assume they could be successful, the notion would have seemed far-fetched. If one added that members of this group had read philosophers like John Locke and would, some 10 years later, construct one of the most admirable constitutions ever created by humankind, then certainly that person would have been seen as a utopian fool.

What I am proposing here will not be easy to accomplish, but bold actions taken by wealthy Americans in order to save their democracy are possible. And bold, powerful steps are necessary if we ever are to overcome the stagnation of our democracy and make it functional again.

Some will be uneasy with a recommendation that more funds from wealthy individuals be introduced into the American political system. But there is a huge difference between what this paper recommends and the already vast amount of ‘big money’ dominating American elections. Any wealthy individual donating to the proposed assembly suggested in this paper will have to be satisfied with having a microcosm of the public deciding on how it is to be used to improve voting. This is diametrically opposed to the freedom that now exists for wealthy individuals to support whatever ideology or interest they choose to support.

Idealists still dream of adopting a workable campaign finance reform without carefully studying the lack of success of previous efforts. Four major attempts at US campaign finance reform have been attempted since the 1920s, and all have been unsuccessful. Short of an all-but-unattainable constitutional amendment, effective campaign finance reform will not be adopted in the US.

Some steps in this direction have been taken in the US and elsewhere. Australian millionaire Luca Belgiorno-Nettis has set up newDemocracy to promote the use of democratic methods in his country. A considerable portion of its work has gone to support Citizens Juries. Pierre Omidyar, an American billionaire, has set up the Democracy Fund to do something similar in the US, although it focuses more on making the current political system work better, rather than on systems change. But both of these efforts are guided by boards consisting of only about three to five insiders who are trusted advisors of the two benefactors of the operations.

Bold, powerful steps are necessary if we ever are to overcome the stagnation of our democracy and make it functional again.

What I propose is for a number of wealthy Americans to commit considerably more than the funds represented by the two groups just described, and that they consult with the American people to carry out their efforts rather than rely on their own thoughts and those of their closest advisors. This is by no means a criticism of Omidyar’s and Belgiorno-Nettis’ foundations, which I admire greatly. It is simply to say that our crisis of democracy needs to be faced in consultation with microcosms of the American public who are given time to get to know each other, overcome polarization and then make informed judgments about the best things we can do to make our democracy something to be proud of again.

This clearly would be an unusual alliance. Why would a cross-section of Americans ever be willing to work with a group of billionaires, and vice versa? The answer is that both sides may see the challenges to democracy as great enough to warrant their finding a way to work together rather than going their separate ways.

Note that such funding is vital to improve voting. Even if the CEF does not turn out to be a successful reform, funding along these lines will be needed. Reforms such as widespread implementation of ranked-choice voting will require funding from wealthy individuals, just as much as the CEF.

Robust Citizens’ Assemblies

Assuming the CEF is implemented, it must be done using robust assemblies. This means that they should be done in a transparent and fair way, using experienced staff and plenty of time.
The OECD paper lays out many aspects of a robust assembly, and others have made proposals as well (e.g., Citizens’ Assemblies: Guide to Democracy That Works by Marcin Gerwin). But I see too many assemblies being conducted that do not meet the criteria for robust assemblies, especially in the areas of agenda setting and evaluation to ensure a fair process that is not biased by the staff or other insiders who may influence the discussions. (It remains to be seen whether it is possible to conduct robust assemblies using online meetings, as opposed to face-to-face gatherings. As this paper is being written, both the Jefferson Center in Minnesota and Healthy Democracy in Oregon are conducting research on the viability of online meetings.)

There are five aspects of assemblies that I find vital, if they are to be conducted in a robust way.

• Agenda. The agenda for an assembly must be fair and transparent. Since creating the Citizens Jury process in the 1970s, I have looked for a set of objective criteria for doing this but, to my regret, I have not found any. Therefore, I recommend that the participants set their own agenda, but only after they are very familiar with the process. The research phase of the CEF I propose—those crucial first two years—offers participants the time and opportunity to both learn and act upon the resulting knowledge. They come into the process with a first-year agenda set by the staff but, by the year’s end, will be tasked with setting the agenda for the second year. Though imperfect, this method veers away from staff and sponsor bias and gives a microcosm of the public a rare opportunity to set an agenda for their coming work.
• Size and Length. An assembly should be run with a number that approaches the 160 participants of the original assembly in British Columbia in 2004. Although there are projects now being run in Europe under the banner of this name that involve fewer, I believe that there should be at least 100. The original set of meetings with 10 two-day weekends is a good length to emulate. In projects involving lengthy travel for some participants, the assembly could be conducted with five to seven three-day weekends.
• Understanding. It is important that the randomly selected microcosm of the public become confident in their understanding of an issue or topic under examination. It is crucial that they learn together with the support of a staff that has been trained in the importance of minimizing staff bias.My proposal is a pragmatic approach that allows a minipublic to come to a sufficient understanding of a topic. After about three days of hearing testimonies presenting three or four major points of view, and with ample time for them to pose questions, the participants should be divided into groups containing a mix of liberal and conservative views. They will then be asked to summarize what they have heard without commenting on the validity of the presentations or their appeal to the values of the participants.

  These summaries should then be sent to the presenters for their comments, which can then be reviewed by the participants, who may or may not wish to modify their own summaries. If the presenters believe that they have been understood, this can stand as a sufficient indication that the participants now understand the topic. If one or more presenters feel that they have not been understood, further examination by the participants will be necessary. Perhaps more witnesses would need to be called for further background information and to clarify the topic for the participants.

  Of course, claims of being misunderstood can go on endlessly, but my experience shows that participants have a good sense of when they are being manipulated. It should take little work for them to declare whether the topic is indeed too complex for laypeople to understand, or that they feel confident in their understanding and disagree with the presenters’ insistence that they have not been understood.

  This approach to ‘understanding’ is based on what is sufficient to make a policy choice that is under consideration. It also is posited in light of how well minipublics can do when compared to legislators. Legislators who visited a Citizens Jury often commented that they wished they had the time and carefully designed hearings to learn about issues in the way the participants in the Citizens Jury have done. There are always a few experts among policymakers, but I believe a majority of those in minipublics making a judgment on an issue have a better understanding than a majority of the legislators voting on the same issue.

  The level of understanding we should seek for a minipublic depends on the purpose at hand.  Certainly, some Citizens Juries conducted for five days achieved an impressive level of understanding, and such has been the case with the majority of Citizens Initiative Review projects conducted. But my current view is that the level of understanding in some of the Citizens Jury projects conducted in the 1990s was insufficient to produce really solid policy recommendations.

  The one time we had the opportunity to ask the participants to review their understanding of an issue was in a small Citizens Jury conducted by the Jefferson Center in May 2012 on the complex topic of federal debt and deficit. There were only 12 jurors, but they divided into three groups, with each group in charge of summarizing one of the three positions that was presented to them by witnesses from the American Enterprise Institute, Demos, and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. They were assigned carefully to smaller groups to ensure that a mix of attitudes on the key issue were represented. Their task was not to say whether or not they liked or agreed with the issue assigned to them but simply to summarize, in their own words, what they had been told. After they completed their task, their summaries were reviewed by the entire group of 12 jurors and then sent to the three advocates for comments. These were then returned with comments from the presenters, who only made a few suggested corrections to the summaries. Virtually all of these proposed changes were accepted by the participants. In this six-day Citizens Jury, the center was able to offer solid evidence that the participants understood the presentations made to them on a complex topic by witnesses from three different points of view.

  This and other experiences have led me to believe that if a minipublic is conducted on something as complex as the future of jobs in America, it should be done with an assembly that meets for five to seven three-day weekends. Much more can be said about this, but at least this note is a start of the discussion.

• Technical staff. In a typical Citizens Jury or assembly, witnesses are called to present information. Additionally, the project staff usually makes an introductory presentation on the topic. However, when there is complex material to be discussed and when disagreements may be strong, there should be a technical staff assigned to fact-check and possibly be given additional assignments. This will prevent the project staff from getting caught up in arguments over the trustworthiness of the information presented.It is all too easy for participants to go online in the evening and find claims to back up their own views of the topic at hand. This makes it essential for there to be staff who are trusted by the participants to check the validity of assertions that arise. It would be best for the participants themselves to choose two or three people whom they trust to perform this function. A list of retired arbitrators could be a good source of such people. Retired legislative staff might be another. It should be pointed out to the participants that the large majority of legislatures use staff to help elected officials understand the policies they are considering. This provides a good alternative for participants who might otherwise have to argue with some of the more ideological members of the group over the validity of factual assertions. Participants should be asked which pool of people they would prefer to draw from and then given the opportunity to meet half a dozen or so candidates, from which they can choose two or three.

  This is likely to necessitate experimentation before the staff of the assemblies agree on clear guidelines for technical staff. What types of questions should they consider, and which should they decline to answer? Nonetheless, without technical staff, the assembly staff runs the risk of needing to fact-check complex and often contentious issues, or leaving competing witnesses and participants—who may find information from online sources—to argue over factual assertions.

• Process Committee. There is wide agreement among those who run Citizens Juries or assemblies that some kind of evaluation of the work should be conducted. One way to do this is to engage some outside group. But which one? If the outside group is drawn from those who have experience with minipublics, its members may be unwilling to be really critical of the work of their colleagues, as is typical of professional review committees. If the outside group is really separate from experience with minipublics, this may provide good credibility but poses a risk for members not to know what to look for in carrying out their evaluation, or for them to impose their own ideological framework.I propose that every assembly should set up a process committee with 12 to 24 members, made up of a cross-section of participants. They should work with the staff to draw up an extensive list of questions about aspects of the assembly that deserve to be watched closely. Some will be obvious and very important. What wealthy patrons or foundations are funding this project? How can we know that they are not controlling the outcome from behind the scenes? How can we evaluate whether or not the staff are doing their job properly? Have participants been chosen following published guidelines for the random selection of citizens and stratification of age, education, gender, race, geographical location and political attitude to truly comprise a microcosm of the American public? Is the set agenda fair to conservatives and liberals alike? What improvements would they recommend? Other tasks for this committee would be small but nevertheless important, such as a few members being assigned to count votes and verify that the comments of the participants are summarized properly.

Conclusions

Voting is a critical part of our democratic system, but it is functioning poorly, as it becomes increasingly difficult for voters to figure out what really is going on in our political system. The need to do something in order to make more reasoned choices at election time has been recognized for a long time. New York Times Magazine in March 8, 1992 pointed out that:

the problems encountered by Bill Clinton at that time provided a textbook case of the situation described by Larry J. Sabato, author of Feeding Frenzy. Marginal issues obliterate substantive ones as the media finds itself unable to avoid what used to be regarded as issues unworthy of the ‘respectable’ press. But now the lines have become blurred between the supermarket tabloids, television news, and the respectable press, between entertainment and journalism.

Our National Institute of Health spends over $30 billion yearly on research and development to sustain the health of the American people. Clearly, our democratic system is as critical to the future of America as our healthcare system. Hence major investments are called for.

In the context of making a system work properly, the proposal for the CEF to be funded at roughly $70 million over a four-year period is modest. It would make a great deal of sense for investments to be made in other methods for improving the vote as well.

Over the last decade, the experience of the Citizens Initiative Review in Oregon has convinced me that funding for democratic reforms should not come from government. The very forces that have damaged voting in this country have invaded our government to the degree that democratic reforms that truly serve the people—as opposed to the interest groups and political parties that now dominate our government—are unlikely to be funded effectively from within it.

Will a few wealthy people see the need to make voting work more effectively and invest significantly to accomplish this? If such a group can be found, their credibility will be greatly enhanced if they are willing to work with minipublics in deciding how to invest. The public is legitimately concerned with ‘big money in politics.’ If there is a new group of democratic heroes, analogous to the so-called Founding Fathers, who are willing to be guided by minipublics on how they invest in reforms, America stands a chance for the ‘fourth founding’ that the Association of Arts and Sciences report cites.

Postscript

The Citizens Election Forum focuses on the United States. With modifications, it certainly could be used elsewhere. But one reason for my focus on the US is the nature of our presidential system. The most important vote an American casts is for the president, and it is here that the greatest need for the CEF exists. Were the CEF to be adapted for use in another nation, it would have to be modified to fit with laws regarding the financing of elections, as most nations have stricter regulations than those in the US. Adaptations also would have to be made for a parliamentary system, and likely for proportional representation, as opposed to the single-member districts used in the US. Surely the need exists in other nations to overcome polarization and get voters to focus on the long-term needs of the nation, but I am not sufficiently versed in electoral laws outside the US to recommend modifications to the CEF to meet the needs within a different political system. I imagine that the Bertelsmann Foundation in Germany could conduct a CEF as proposed in this paper, but cannot venture an opinion as to whether it could be used to advise voters or simply to urge parties to adopt different positions.

About the Author

Ned Crosby invented the Citizens Jury process in 1971, while writing a Ph.D. thesis on social ethics.  He received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota in 1973. In 1974 he set up the Jefferson Center, now the world’s oldest nongovernmental organization working on democratic reforms while avoiding taking positions on public policy issues.

Crosby worked for over a decade with his wife, Pat Benn, to establish the Citizens Initiative Review in Oregon as an official part of the state’s elections system. They were cofounders of Healthy Democracy in Oregon, the organization which conducts the Citizens Juries which evaluate the ballot initiatives.

Crosby has also worked on a number of other issues related to democracy and human rights. In the early 1970s, he helped establish Operation De Novo in Hennepin County and served on boards including the Minneapolis Legal Aid Society, the Carolyn Foundation, and the African American Institute in New York.  In the 1980s he played a key role in setting up the Latin American Working Group, which coordinated legislative efforts to protect democracy and human rights in Central America. It played a major role in bringing peace, such as it is, to El Salvador.