Demoex

Millions of Voices For those who care about the health of our democracy, something special happened in Keene, New Hampshire today.

While unveiling his government reform agenda, John Edwards called for the creation of “Citizen Congresses” that will convene one million Americans in national deliberations about issues of high public concern that make official recommendations to Congress and the President.

Here is an excerpt from Senator Edwards’ One Democracy Initiative”:

Create a Citizen Congress: Most Americans can only exert significant influence on Washington by voting every two or four years. Despite the growth of communications technology, most voters are no closer to Washington policymakers than they were hundreds of years ago. Edwards believes in the wisdom of the American people and the power of deliberation. Every two years, he will ask 1 million citizens nationwide to participate in Citizen Congresses combining local town halls with the latest technology to create true national discussions, unfiltered by interest groups. Americans will discuss the challenges and trade-offs facing our country and offer advisory opinions to leaders. Part of an emerging movement to continue the democratic process between elections, citizen-centered projects have given ordinary people a voice in designs for the World Trade Center memorial, the redevelopment of New Orleans, health care reform in California and local issues in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. [Ackerman and Fishkin, 2004; November 5th Coalition, 2007; AmericaSpeaks, 2007]

While Gordon Brown and other world leaders have initiated innovative new processes to give the public a voice in the governance process, this is first time I can think of in which a U.S. leader in the national spotlight has called for such an institutional reform.

It’s about time.

Our democracy is broken. According to a poll from The Pew Charitable Trusts this spring, only 34% of Americans said they believe that their government “cares about what people like me think.”

The public’s trust in America’s democratic institutions continues to decline, while the ability of our leaders to cut through political polarization and special interest group politics makes it harder and harder to act in the common good.

Four years ago, AmericaSpeaks was approached by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to come up with a strategy for what it would look like to engage the American public at a large enough scale to impact Congress. In response, we convened more than a dozen leaders in the field of deliberative democracy, including the Study Circles Resource Center, the National Issues Forums, and Viewpoint Learning to come up with a plan.

The result was a report called Millions of Voices, which served as a blueprint for convening national deliberations of millions of Americans. Recently, AmericaSpeaks engaged 21,000 Northeast Ohio residents in a regional deliberation on revitalizing the 16-county region’s economy, called Voices & Choices, to test-run the Millions of Voices strategy.

Our strategy combines a number of different kinds of forums to bring the public together. Thousands of people will take part in national town meetings that bring people together at multiple sites linked together by satellite. Others will come together on the web through national deliberations in asynchronous online forums. And many others will join smaller meetings in homes, community centers and schools.

It can be done. And it can make a difference.

If done at an appropriate scale, national deliberations should foster consensus and encourage people to focus on solutions for the common good. Rather than just talking with their neighbors, citizens respond to the opinions and views of people from across the country. Together, they seek to identify common priorities, not of a city or a state, but of the American public as a whole.

National deliberations should empower the public and increase the capacity of our governing institutions to address difficult policy issues. Not only can a national deliberation identify clear public priorities, it can mobilize citizens behind those priorities. It should build the political will needed to act by creating a constituency behind a given action.

Finally, national deliberations should be organized to make the public less subject to manipulation. By providing the public with a chance to learn about an issue and struggle through the tough policy trade-offs involved, deliberation can increase resistance to spin by special interests.

I congratulate John Edwards for understanding that democratic reform means doing more than reforming our election system. The public needs a voice beyond election day. I hope other candidates will propose their own solutions for strengthening our democracy.

UPDATE: Additional posts on the speech have been made at: Peter Levine’s blog, Daily Kos, Tom Paine, Democracy Space, Open Left, and MyDD