Can Voters Deliberate?

Deliberative processes generally result in increased issue-specific knowledge for participants and can lead to opinion change as a result. The question asked in chapter 9 is: Does this translate into increased knowledge and opinion change for the wider public who these processes aim to assist? The chapter summarizes research suggesting that voters often lack the information they need to cast their votes on ballot measures. As detailed in this chapter, studies of Citizens’ Initiative Reviews (CIRs) show the reviews can help voters overcome these information deficiencies. Voters who read the CIR statements were more likely to form opinions that aligned with the balance of information and arguments provided by review participants. Further, voters tend to find the statements both reliable and useful and learn new information about the ballot measure, even if that information does not align with their cultural predispositions.

Progressive Politics in the Pacific Northwest

Through interviews with the civic innovators responsible for bringing these civic innovations into existence, chapter 4 recounts the development of Citizens’ Juries and the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR). Since the 1970s, Citizens’ Juries have convened a sample of approximately twenty-four citizens, reflective of the demographics of the communities from which they are drawn, to collectively study, discuss, and assess policies and electoral candidates. The CIR was born of this idea. It asks citizens to study a ballot measure and then provide an assessment of that measure for the wider public to utilize when casting their ballots. In the chapter’s telling of these stories, readers are introduced to four civic reformers—Ned Crosby, Pat Benn, Tyrone Reitman, and Elliot Shuford. Each of these individuals played a key role in the design, lobbying, and eventual implementation of the CIR.

Introduction

Citizens are often asked to make decisions about ballot measures, but they rarely have access to reliable information with which to make those decisions. This chapter tells the story of Seattle’s failed monorail project to explain the problems voters face when figuring out how to cast their vote. It introduces a new governing institution that could help solve that dilemma, the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR). The CIR gathers together a small group of citizens to deliberate about a ballot measure and then pass along their findings for voters to use when making their own decisions. The CIR continues the tradition of experimental democracy, which seeks to improve the ways that citizens govern themselves. The CIR, and deliberative institutions like it, attempt to empower the public by introducing reliable information into political decision making.

Restoring Public Faith

Deliberative participation can have a profound impact on how citizens understand and enact political life. Chapter 10 reviews research that demonstrate this impact. Jury participation can increase the likelihood of voting, and studies of Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) and Australian Citizens’ Parliament participants find that deliberative experiences encourage participants to view government as responsive to the public and more confident in their ability to self-govern. The chapter also shows that CIR participants report increased participation in political discussions and community-based engagement, though they were not more likely to participate in partisan politics. It goes on to detail how some of these effects spilled over into the wider electorate. Those who were aware of the CIR and read its statements tended to increase their own political efficacy, even though they themselves did not directly participate in the review.

Back in the Wind Tunnel

Chapter 8 reviews the 2012 Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR), which faced a problem common to contemporary elections: the influence of money. That year, participants studied Measure 82, which would have legalized non-tribal casinos in Oregon. Well-funded casino lobbyists represented the advocates of the measure and tribal members, who themselves operated casinos, represented the opponents. The chapter shows how, despite efforts by proponents to utilize manipulative campaign tactics, participants took their task seriously and produced a nuanced and readable statement for voters. It goes on to explain the results of further studies showing that the CIR continued to maintain process integrity as it expanded to other locations. Findings indicate that the CIR does not appear to favor any one type of decision, with panelists as likely to largely agree as they are to reach a more evenly split decision and as likely to ultimately side with the electorate as not.

The Best Argument Wins

Deliberation encourages participants to reason with one another chapter 6 details how cultural biases often impede such reasoning. Cultural predispositions are an indication of people’s beliefs along two dimensions: hierarchical-egalitarian and individualism-collectivism. The first relates to whether government should regulate individual behavior and the second to whether government should provide a social safety net. US political parties and subsequent policies map onto these dimensions, with Republicans more likely to identify as hierarchical individualists and Democrats more likely to identify as egalitarian collectivists. As outlined here, deliberative processes, such as the CIR and Deliberative Polling, ask participants to overcome their cultural predispositions in the interest of reaching the best decision possible. Deliberation can produce such results, particularly when the available evidence clearly favors specific policy proposals. On values-based questions, however, deliberative participants may ultimately rely on their cultural cognitions to reach decisions.

A Crucial Test

Chapter 5 tells the story of the first official Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) through the eyes of one of its participants, Marion Sharp. The CIR asked twenty-four demographically stratified voters to review an Oregon ballot measure that increased mandatory minimum sentencing for repeat sexual offenses and driving under the influence of intoxicants. Over five days, participants heard from expert witnesses and reviewed evidence related to the need for and potential impact of mandatory sentencing. Participants engaged in facilitated discussion aimed at gauging the credibility of that evidence and distilling it for voters. Despite flare-ups among participants and behind-the-scenes challenges, at the end of the review Marion and her fellow panelists drafted a Citizens’ Statement containing key facts about the measure and the best arguments favoring and opposing it. That statement appeared in the state Voters’ Pamphlet for the electorate to use before casting their ballots.

Bureaucracy and Boycott

Chapter 7 discusses how deliberative processes like the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) must contend with the same strategic tactics that diminish the integrity of the wider governing system. This chapter tells the story of how CIR organizers lobbied for its permanent implementation and fended off opponents who were wary that it would undermine their power to sway the electorate. Organizers ultimately prevailed, and the CIR became an official governing institution and a commission was set up to oversee it. In 2012, advocates for one of the measures boycotted the process, forcing organizers to scramble to find replacements who could testify on behalf of the measure. The chapter shows how, in both instances, CIR organizers and proponents returned to the initial premise of deliberation, bringing reason back into politics, to ensure that both the institution and the process were successful.

Conclusion

The book’s conclusion details how the Citizen’s Initiative Review (CIR) exemplifies the possibility for democratic reform. This chapter draws on the stories of several deliberative reforms to exemplify their possibilities and pitfalls. Tough some attempts at institutionalization have fallen flat, the CIR has expanded from a pilot in Oregon to a new governing body being tested and proposed across the United States. Other citizen-centered institutions, like juries, have seen similar expansion, bringing greater opportunity for self-governance to citizens across the globe. Though the diffusion of democratic reform may seem idealistic, once immovable policy can shift. One example reviewed in the chapter is same-sex marriage legalization, which swept through the United States as voters and politicians began to understand the perspectives of individuals and communities who had been denied the right to marry. In Ireland, a deliberative minipublic produced a ballot measure to legalize same-sex marriage that won public backing. The chapter, and book, concludes that democratic reform is possible but will not happen unless the public demands it—citizens, activists, politicians, and academics alike.

Losing Our Minds

Citizens across the world report a declining trust in democratic government and in one another. This chapter argues that the rise in alienation is due largely to the co-optation of democratic institutions. Alienation occurs when citizens feel disempowered, disconnected, and uninformed, and it leads them to opt out of civic life. Elections provide one example where citizens often lack the information needed to reach decisions that align with their underlying values and interests. As the chapter explains, deliberative institutions, however, offer an alternative path by giving citizens the opportunity to participate in decision making and the information necessary to do so in meaningful ways. The implementation of such processes requires civic innovators who push for institutional change, and this chapter introduces one such democratic reformer who created the Citizens’ Initiative Review.