CitizenSovereignty.org

Time's Joe Klein: Why Not a Deliberative Poll on Budget Reform?

As we head into the Congressional election season, you might be wary of the promises you expect to hear, especially regarding federal spending and taxes.  If so, you are not alone.  Joe Klein of Time Magazine is certain that the next Congress will fail to take action on long-term budgetary issues, and he is certain that the president's bipartisan commission on fiscal reform, whose report is due on December 1, will merely prefigures that failure.  Instead, Klein asks,

"Why doesn't Obama transform his blue-ribbon budget commission into a deliberative-democracy exercise? Let his 18 commissioners - who range from a conservative budget wonk like Congressman Paul Ryan to former Service Employees union leader Andy Stern - prepare a briefing paper for 500 [representative and randomly selected] Americans...and then make themselves available for close questioning. Let them lay out the most vexing budget choices we face. Let the whole process be televised. It doesn't have to be binding.

What Klein is talking about is using a Deliberative Poll to overcome partisan gridlock over the federal budget.  Why not?  Deliberative Polls have worked in China.  They have even worked in Texas.

"But what if there were a machine, a magical contraption that could take the process of making tough decisions in a democracy, shake it up, dramatize it and make it both credible and conclusive? As it happens, the ancient Athenians had one. It was called the kleroterion, and it worked something like a bingo-ball selector. Each citizen - free males only, of course - had an identity token; several hundred were picked randomly every day and delegated to make major decisions for the polis. But that couldn't happen now, could it? Most of our decisions are too complicated and technical for mere civilians to make, aren't they?

"Actually, the Chinese coastal district of Zeguo (pop. 120,000) has its very own kleroterion, which makes all its budget decisions. The technology has been updated: the kleroterion is a team led by Stanford professor James Fishkin. Each year, 175 people are scientifically selected to reflect the general population. They are polled once on the major decisions they'll be facing. Then they are given a briefing on those issues, prepared by experts with conflicting views. Then they meet in small groups and come up with questions for the experts - issues they want further clarified. Then they meet together in plenary session to listen to the experts' response and have a more general discussion. The process of small meetings and plenary is repeated once more. A final poll is taken, and the budget priorities of the assembly are made known and adopted by the local government. It takes three days to do this. The process has grown over five years, from a deliberation over public works (new sewage-treatment plants were favored over road-building) to the whole budget shebang. By most accounts it has succeeded brilliantly, even though the participants are not very sophisticated: 60% are farmers. The Chinese government is moving toward expanding it into other districts....

"Fishkin has done this on several continents and in many countries, including the U.S. In Texas, he ran a deliberative-democracy process for a consortium of utilities, from 1996 to 2007, which gradually transformed the state from last to first in the use of wind power. "Over that time, the percentage of people - and these were stakeholders, utility customers - willing to pay more for wind went from 54% to 84%," he says."

Polls that manipulate versus those that empower

Jane Mansbridge, Howard Rheingold and David Weinberger discuss Deliberative Polling with Jim Fishkin at the 2010 Personal Democracy Forum in New York.  Fishkin summed up their value in one sentence: "Deliberative Polls empower the public rather than manipulate the public."  (To view it in a larger format, click here.)

-- Bill Corbett

Lessig on muck...

...in two varieties.  Both related to the Deepwater Horizon.

AmericaSpeaks…in Second Life

You’re Invited!

 

AmericaSpeaks…

in Second Life!

A National Discussion of the Federal Budget and the Economy

Held in the virtual world of Second Life^®

 

Saturday, June 26, 2010

8:30am-Noon Second Life Time / Pacific

(3.5 hours in duration)

Free!

Click here for Advance Registration (Required)

 

Co-Sponsored By

■ California NIF Network ■ Deliberative IDEAS, a Deliberative Practice group in Second Life

■ World Café ■ Center for Voter Deliberation of Northern Virginia ■ PublicDecisions ■ Texas Forums  

As national leaders work to jump-start our economy, enormous challenges loom on the horizon that threatens the long-term vitality of the United States. This national event focuses on our most prominent, long-term challenge: our immense and growing national debt. Tough choices will need to be made that will be highly contested and sometimes unpopular. If we as a nation are going to be successful at addressing this challenge, it will be necessary to educate and to engage the American people. 

AmericaSpeaks: Our Budget, Our Economy is a national discussion to find common ground on tough choices about our federal budget. Americans from across the country will come together to weigh-in on strategies to ensure a sustainable fiscal future and a strong economic recovery. Our Second Life conversation will exactly trace the schedule and discussion of the official AmericaSpeaks sites…and our data will be forwarded to be included in the AmericaSpeaks final report.

In 20 cities across the country thousands of citizens will participate face-to-face in this AmericaSpeaks event. Participants will be connected live via satellite video, webcast and interactive technologies. Our version of AmericaSpeaks will be connected for voice communication via MaestroConference, a dynamic environment combining the convenience of traditional conference calls, with the interactivity of a live workshop.

The week before the event, you’ll receive a confirmation that includes a link to the discussion guide for the June 26 deliberation. We'll ask you to take a few minutes to download and read this brief guide (5 pages) before the day of the deliberation.

How You’ll Participate

On the day of the deliberation, you’ll sign into Second Life.  Second Life is a virtual, immersive world where people can interact just like at a real meeting, except it’s online. You must have a Second Life account (it’s free) and an avatar, and be able to access Second Life from your computer (high speed internet is required).

Each person will be assigned to a small group at a table with a trained moderator, and you’ll participate in a dialogue with other participants about the budget and the economy.

Agenda for the June 26th Deliberation

• Welcome and self-introductions
• Deliberation about Choice 1
• Deliberation about Choice 2
• Deliberation about Choice 3
• Benefits and Tradeoffs
• Wrap-up / Reflections

New to Second Life...new to AmericaSpeaks?

Attend one of our free orientation sessions (30 minutes) to learn the basic skills for participating in Second Life…and in the AmericaSpeaks event:

• Basic skills for navigating Second Life
• Specific information about MaestroConference voice system
• Orientation to the AmericaSpeaks discussion format…Q&A on the event

Orientations will be held on Tuesday, June 15th; Thursday, June 17th; Monday, June 21st; and Thursday, June 24th. We can give you some assistance on the day of the event, but it’s essential that every person be familiar with basic Second Life skills…please take your preparation seriously.

We'll ask you to reserve your seat as part of the registration process.

Questions?

Contact Craig Paterson, Deliberative IDEAS at craig_paterson@yahoo.com / 707 864 0419

Or Beth Offenbacker, PublicDecisions, at beth@publicdecisions.com / 571 303 9208.

DP Ideas Adopted by New UK Coalition Government

A Deliberative Poll in January developed the proposals for an online poll of 10,000 British voters, who selected from those ideas their top priorities for the new government elected this month.  The agreement that created the new Tory/New Liberal coalition government includes steps on three of the top five policy priorities established by the DP and online poll.

-- A national referendum on introduction of a proportional voting system is agreed.
-- The House of Lords will be reformed into an elected chamber.
-- National identity cards will be scrapped.

As the Economist put it earlier this month, the results of recent DPs around the world suggest that, increasingly, "their conclusions have real bite."

-- Bill Corbett

Should Money = Speech = Power?

Should American politics be relatively autonomous from economic power?  That's a question raised by the Citizens United decision, and answered by Bruce Ackerman in this interview with Ezra Klein of the Washington Post.

Does the secret ballot work?

The County Election, pictured at left, is a favorite of mine.  Painted in 1852 by a successful politician, George Caleb Bingham, it depicts a voter publicly swearing his legal eligibility to vote, a prelude to his publicly casting that vote. 

Today, when we talk about the political marketplace, we generally forget that in the the nineteenth century it was no metaphor.  In the crowd of The County Election are potential buyers; every voter is a potential seller.  Too often, potential buyers and sellers arrived at a price that was right.   

Later in that century an Australian innovation took root in America that limited the retail market for votes:  the secret ballot.  It took time, hard-won experience and constantly renewed political will to make the secret ballot work with integrity. 

Does the secret ballot now work? ask Marc Geffroy and R.R. Reno rhetorically in the Washington Post.  If yes,

The United States should establish an anonymous campaign system.  We need a federally chartered clearinghouse for campaign donations that matches donors to designated, registered candidates and political action committees. Under such a system, politicians would not know who supports their careers, er, causes. 

It's a simple but powerful concept. The identity of the campaign donor would be kept secret, which would break the wink-and-nod link between money and the legislative process....

The obvious objection is that anonymity seems to run counter to the idea of free speech. If nobody knows you're contributing, your efforts to signal your support fail. But the First Amendment concerns the unfettered flow of ideas -- not the free flow of money and influence....

Imagine politicians paying you if you promise to vote for them. You can't -- for good reason. The secrecy of the voting booth prevents anyone from knowing whether you are true to your promise. The same would hold for an anonymous campaign finance system. 

Politics should be a marketplace of ideas, not cash.  Transparency undermined political integrity in the  nineteenth century, at the moment of the vote.  In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, political integrity is compromised every time that a political incumbent or challenger takes money from a private interest that, thanks to transparency, is entitled to access and accountability in return. 

Our current system of political campaign finance is like a free lunch.  Especially insofar as there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Bill Corbett

Why not a DP for the GOP?

With social and economic conservatives increasingly at odds, should the Republican Party attempt to get its two wings working together via a Deliberative Poll at the outset of its 2012 presidential nomination process?  The political reporter Walter Shapiro, a veteran of the last eight presidential campaigns, suggests at AOL's Politics Daily that a DP would be an improvement upon the status quo.

Imagine if pollsters selected a random sample of self-identified Republicans and flew them all expenses paid to spend a weekend meeting with all the 2012 Republican presidential contenders at a conference center or on a college campus. This demographic cross-section of the Republican Party (maybe 500 people) would not only hear the stump speeches, but would also question the candidates and their advisers. At the end of the weekend, these now well-informed voters would cast secret ballots for president rendering a verdict on the 2012 GOP field that would put straw polls and name recognition-dominated national surveys to shame.

-- Bill Corbett

Citizens Unite -- Behind the Citizen Involvement in Campaigns Act

Rep. David Wu (D-OR) and Bruce Ackerman propose in the Wall Street Journal on January 27 to revive the system of income tax credits for small political contributions, updated to create a fraud-proof and more user-friendly 21st century system. 

"The place to begin is with a tax cut. Each American should get a refundable federal tax credit of $50 that they can use to make contributions to federal candidates during presidential years, and a suitably smaller sum during off-year federal elections."

The Citizen Involvement in Campaigns Act, introduced as H.R. 726 early in the 111th Congress by Rep. Thomas Petri (R-WI) and Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA), lays the groundwork.  As Rep. Petri said upon introducing their bill,

The concept of empowering small donors is not a new idea. For example, from 1972 to 1986, the federal government offered a tax credit for small political contributions. This provided an incentive for average Americans to contribute to campaigns in small amounts while simultaneously encouraging politicians to solicit donations from a larger pool of contributors. Currently, six geographically and politically diverse states (Oregon, Minnesota, Ohio, Virginia, Arkansas, and Arizona) offer their own tax credits for political contributions. These state-level credits vary in many respects, but all share the same goal of encouraging average Americans to become more involved.

-- Bill Corbett

Citizens United? If we are, then why don't we....

Larry Lessig describes in The Nation a three-part response to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United that will allow certain forms of corporate spending on electioneering previously prohibited.  The decision overturned two of the court's prior decisions, which were not yet two decades old.

Lessig proposes publicly-financed elections; a 7-year ban on former members serving as lobbyists, and, in the wake of the Citizens United decision, a constitutional amendment that would give Congress the power to regulate campaign finance.  These changes are needed, Lessig argues, because

The US Congress has become the Fundraising Congress. And it answers--as Republican and Democratic presidents alike have discovered--not to the People, and not even to the president, but increasingly to the relatively small mix of interests that fund the key races that determine which party will be in power.

This, unfortunately, is true.  It is one reason why this organization is engaged in educating the public on new ways for more people to participate in political life.  New forms of deliberative democracy, new means of funding elections through large numbers of small donor contributions, whatever it takes to restore integrity to American democracy.

Bill Corbett