Jim Fishkin writes about that today at the New York Times website:
"Our project, known as What’s Next California?, was the first statewide deliberative poll — a poll that gathers a scientific sample of respondents to answer questions both before and after they have had a chance to deliberate competing arguments and trade-offs. It provides a window on what voters think of direct democracy and what changes they would, and would not, support. Despite the evident problems, California voters have more confidence in the ballot initiative than they do in other elements of their state government. After spending a weekend immersing themselves in the issues and questioning competing experts about possible reforms, 65 percent of the sample expressed disappointment with California’s state government in general and 70 percent expressed disappointment in the Legislature, but only 37 percent were disappointed in the ballot initiative."
You can read the full article here.
In the next month, viewers online and in California can view the PBS By the People broadcast of the first ever statewide Deliberative Poll on California governance reform, conducted in Torrance, CA on June 24-26, 2011.
Moderated by Judy Woodruff, the special reports the outcomes of the deliberations on four topics:
Broadcast
Digital
On June 24-26, 2011 a scientifically selected random sample of 412 registered voters from throughout California participated in the first ever statewide Deliberative Poll on governance reform, in Torrance, CA. They convened for an open and honest discussion of a wide range of reforms to the state’s legislature, initiative process, local government and tax and fiscal policy.
A total of 30 proposals were considered in these four areas. The participants explored their ideas in moderated small group discussions that covered the critical pros and cons. The participants also posed questions to experts from across the ideological spectrum. Over the course of the weekend’s deliberations participants became more informed and in many cases changed their views significantly. What did they think should be done to fix the state?
Legislative reform: Participants overwhelmingly supported steps to improve public oversight and increase accountability, including requiring the legislature to establish and track performance goals, perform economic impact analysis of major legislation, and publish long-term projections prior to budget votes.
Initiative reform: Participants strongly supported changes to help voters better understand the consequences of initiatives, and they had little interest in permitting the legislature to affect initiatives’ content in any way.
State-local restructuring: Participants wanted to give cities and counties greater control over financing of their programs, in return for establishment and tracking of performance goals. At the same time, slightly more participants after deliberation thought the state should be responsible for the most important policy decisions, although they were evenly split on how much taxation authority should be authorized to the state versus the cities and counties.
Tax and fiscal policy: Participants indicated strong support for fiscal transparency and accountability, but preferences for tax policy remained split.
To learn more about the results, visit the website of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University, or listen to this podcast from Jim Fishkin, one of the organizers of the California Deliberative Poll.
Historian Robert Middlekauff says that about 19 percent of the white population of the colonies were loyal to King George III, rather than their own Contintental Congress.
Meanwhile, Gallup finds that our current Congress inspires the confidence of only 11 percent of the population. HMOs rank higher.
The reasons are many, but one in particular is commonsensical: the dependence of Congressional candidates upon private contributions to fund their election campaigns.
Here is Lawrence Lessig, writing in the Washington Post and appearing in a video on its website, about the need for Fair Elections Now Act and the public funding of Congressional election campaigns.
The Boston Review in its September/October edition features a special section, Democracy After Citizens United, in which scholars and commentators offer views on what effect the newly unrestricted independent poltical campaign spending of corporations will have. The thesis of the lead article by Lawrence Lessig is, "Most Americans believe that Congress is for sale, too corrupt to be trusted. The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United will intensify that mistrust."
Lessig actually has two articles in the special section, the second a response to the commenters on his first. In that response, he highlights the incoherence of the Court's majority when it comes to the safeguarding of political integrity.
My complaint is not that special interests participate [in political campaigns]. It is that members [of Congress] are dependent upon them. Not every system in which special interests participate creates improper dependency. As I point out in my [first] essay, the Supreme Court is littered with briefs from special interests arguing one side or another in important cases. In this sense, special interests participate in the proceedings of the Court, but no one credible would suggest that the Supreme Court is therefore dependent upon those interests rather than the law. Thus Congress, like the Court, has its own proper dependency. But while the Court has been keen to protect its own integrity [e.g., Caperton v. Massey (2009), which concerns a judge’s duty to recusal in cases of conflict of interest] it has been less generous to Congress (e.g., Citizens United).
In Caperton the majority held that the failure of a West Virginia Supreme Court justice to recuse himself from a particular case, in which the top executive of the defendant, the coal company A.T. Massey, had independently spent $3 million on behalf of that justice's re-election, presented a conflict of interest serious enough that it threatened the plaintiff's Constitutional Fourteenth Amendment right to due process.
But in Citizens United, the Court's majority asserted that the free speech rights of a corporation, Citizens United, outweigh the conflict of interest presented when a legislator owes his or her election to the unlimited independent political spending of one or more corporations.
In effect, the Court has told Congress "Heads I win, tails you lose," when it comes to the Court's role in ensuring that corporations are subordinate to our political institutions.
