 Red fabric running right into my arms, and I catch you Red star sinks into the sunset as she sings to see you Guitar is okay Counting the ways that I waited for you to Just get going. Okay. Okay, close. I catch you Red star sinks into the sunset as she sings to see you Counting the ways that I waited for you to Be like honeybees making a hole Listen to silence that you sent me Listen to songs of the brown breasted dev that Listen to ocean You said you would be close to me That you called your own Close is by the dozen I think it's that our grandmothers have some Ba-da-dum Ba-da-da-da-dum Ba-da-da-dum All right. Well, I just want to say quick, thank you everyone who's rolling in. We're gonna hear a few more pieces from Hannah. As you're coming in, feel free to grab some pie. And then in about probably 10, 15 minutes, we'll start with the program. So right now, get a chance to pie, talk to some of your neighbors, listen to some music, and then we'll get started soon. Thanks for being here. Thanks, Jesse. Let it be just what it is Rosentil ocean like a kiss Me with the changes like the clouds I'm getting turned just inside out That I can't grab the sun in my truth and disguise By your side in case you call And you're surprised about it all It's her that you remember me Well, you're caught up in your fantasy In your fantasy To disguise You're the biggest pretender Thank you. We got hot car guitar up here Aren't you the home that she Or the sweet that she gave You know that you do Okay, I'll play one more song. Thanks all of you for being here at this beautiful event. Take me by the hand and understand I see how they make you feel small Have a sing in disguise I'll back up to school If only you'd see If it's something that I can bear They say Thank you. Thank you so much. My name is Hanna Hanna. Hanna Hanna. Palindrome both ways. I have a social media. You can find me HannaHmusic.com And I have a band called Honey and Soul That you can follow too. Thanks. All right. All right. Well, thank you so much. Round of applause for Hanna. Thank you, Hanna. Hanna is an amazing singer, performer, songwriter. Definitely go follow Hanna and Honey and Soul. Really amazing group. And Hanna is an amazing performer. So thank you all of you for being here. My name is Jesse Warren. I am the founder and executive director of Democracy Creative. So today what we're going to do is we're going to hear about citizens assemblies. And before we do that, though, I want to give you a quick kind of overview of what democracy creative is and why we're doing this and why we're so interested in citizens assemblies. Just some big picture things. So, you know, democracy creative, I started back in 2019 and the idea was I wanted to bring more creative thinking into solving the problems that are facing our democracy. So, you know, I was like probably everyone in this room, regardless of what side of the political aisle you're on, was very disheartened, by the way, politics and government were unfolding. And I thought that we needed more creativity in solving those problems. So at that point I met with, I was lucky enough to get connected with Steve Conant who owns the Soda Plant. I told him about the idea. And he gave us this great space in the Soda Plant. And so I don't know if he's watching live, but Steve is really a big part of why we're able to be here today. And that space allowed us to find each other, the other people who are interested in this idea and this project. It allowed me to find Tevin, who's become my co-conspirator in democracy creative and thinking about these problems in this creative way. Allowed us to find Liz Corker, who's watching on the live stream. It's her dad's birthday this weekend. So she's in Idaho, 90th birthday. So she can't be here. But it allowed us to find Terry, who lives right in Burlington, but is someone who's really prominent in this field on this stuff. So that's all because we got that really cool space. So we're a non-profit, but we have this shared co-working space in the Soda Plant. We shared this space with other non-profits. So that's a little bit about democracy creative. I just want this to be a little bit higher because I kind of have to hunch over, you hear me? Okay. So if there's one thing that I want people to remember from this event, it is the idea that the design of government directly shapes the policy outcomes of that government. And what I mean by that is, I think a lot of us, when we're thinking about the change we want to make, we think a lot about the policy that we want to see enacted, which makes a lot of sense and it's very important. But I think we also need to spend a little more time thinking about how is that policy being made? Because I think the promise of what we're going to be talking about today is that if we can come up with a better system to design how government functions, we can have consistently better policy that's going to serve the needs of the public much better. And that was what I was thinking when I started Democracy Creative. And I thought I was alone, but then once we joined that, or once I started that, started to see what was going on, I realized there's actually a network of people around the world who are thinking about this government and this problem in this way. And I'm thinking of Democracy R&D, which is this group that we've become a part of. And what basically Democracy R&D is, it's a network of people all across the world in every continent, Australia, Asia, Middle East, North America, South America, everywhere, Africa, it's pretty amazing. It's actually the fewest in the US really. And they're all thinking about this problem. How do we design government to make policy work better, to have better policy outcomes? And the big consensus that has kind of emerged amongst all these people independently thinking about this problem and all these different parts of the world is that something like the process we're going to be talking about tonight is going to have to be part of the solution. Because it addresses all of the repeating flaws we're seeing happen in electoral democracies all across the world. The same problems happen. The way I think about it, it's like if you have a car, for example, and you design a car, and everywhere you send that car, everywhere in the world it's having the same problems, you would say there's a design flaw with that car. It's something similar when we talk about the problems we're facing with democracy and politics. So that's what Citizens' Assemblies are about, thinking about that, how can we improve that. So now I'm going to call up Terry to the stage. I'll say a couple of quick words about Terry before you come up. Sorry. So one of the things I also know about Terry is in this global sphere of people thinking about Citizens' Assemblies and thinking about the design of government and how it can be improved, they all know Terry and they know Terry's work. It's pretty cool that he's right here in Burlington. We really lucked out Democracy Creative that Terry's here in Burlington. One of the things Terry wrote is a paper on, it was called Multi-Body Sortition, which I don't know if he's going to talk specifically about that, but basically the thing to know about that is that it heavily shaped the design of the first standing Citizens' Assembly that was ever created in the world. A pretty historic thing, Terry's paper influenced that. The Aus-Belgian Citizens' Assembly Aus-Belgian model. So it's very cool, he's right here in Burlington, but that's not all he's architected. He's also the architect of the NPAs that are such a critical part of our, yeah, there's a round of applause. Because that's such a fabric of Burlington now, and such a part of the civic culture here. And there's, I think a lot of people here, we saw at all the NPAs as we did the NPA tour talking to everyone about this. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, he also is a well-known salsa dancer, and Burlington's most affordable piano tuner as well, if you knew that. So yeah, I'll call Terry up to the stage and he'll really explain this stuff for you. And then after that, yeah. So, first off, yeah, Terry Bericius, I was a city counselor. This is where I used to meet with, you know, when I was elected in 1981 along with Bernie Sanders, a couple of other people who are here. Yeah, a few other people, oh my goodness, Peter, hey. A few other former city counselors are sprinkled in here who remember those days. After I served 10 years in the city council, including a term as council president, I ran for the legislature. I got elected and served five terms in the state legislature. And when I left the legislature, because my second child was about to be born and my wife had the good job with insurance, so I left the legislature to be a home child raiser. And then I started working for an organization called Fair Vote, the Center for Voting and Democracy, working on election reform nationally and internationally. Things like ranked choice voting. I helped institute the original ranked choice voting in Burlington back, I don't know how many, like more than 12, 14, 16 years ago when we elected mayors with ranked choice voting. And so I was working on that nationally and internationally. And I want to tell you how I came to Citizens' Assembly and the word that you may have heard a little bit now is sortition, which simply refers to the random selection of ordinary people forming a deliberative body to make policy rather than politicians. A non-electoral, more like a jury, a large jury of ordinary people getting all the information, getting all the facts, deliberating with each other, seeing if there's common ground rather than butting heads and who can win and who has more votes and we win, you lose, na-na-na. So that dynamic is what this whole day is sort of about. But anyway, as a citizen's, excuse me, as a Fair Vote election reform policy analyst, one of the organizations I went to give testimony to was in British Columbia. They had appointed a Citizens' Assembly to look at reforming their voting method in British Columbia. And the way they did it was rather unusual. They picked one man and one woman from each riding, each legislative district in the province randomly. And they brought them together and over many, many months of meeting on weekends, et cetera, et cetera, they brought in all the expert witnesses, they brought in all this information, they had public hearings, they deliberated and they came up with a proposal for a new voting system. I gave testimony to this Citizens' Assembly about what I thought they should reform their voting method to be in British Columbia. Ranked-choice voting, of course. And by the end of that process, I had had the revelation. No. This is what democracy looks like. 160 ordinary citizens coming together with no, no agenda, no hidden agendas, no campaign donations that they had to satisfy, no future election where they had to worry about if they did what they actually thought was best but wouldn't play well, because the opposition would paint it as screwy. They couldn't go that way. These people could just vote the way they actually thought was best for their community. And from that point on, that was around 2004, 2005, I basically have abandoned electoral politics in favor of jury model of democracy, democratic lotteries. I'll say one thing about when I was in city council, one of the things that I did is I initiated the Neighborhood Planning Assemblies. I brought forth a resolution with Michael Matty who was working at the planning office in those days, because my idea was we would use town meeting. We'll just have, like town meeting in the little towns around Vermont, we'll have them in Burlington and into the neighborhoods. We'll have town meeting on a regular basis. Thought this was a great idea. It's very democratic, participatory democracy. And they serve a purpose, but the problem is it's self-selected so that the people who attend are not necessarily representative of the community. And whenever an election cycle was coming around, I'd notice that the Neighborhood Assemblies were packed with people who were partisans who were jockeying for position to get their face out there and name out there before they put their name in the hat to run for office. And it became, it was just a ploy for the partisan game. And it became manipulated for partisan purposes because winning the elections wasn't really mattered. And so I became very, I don't want to say disenchanted, but frustrated that the citizens, the, excuse me, the Neighborhood Planning Assemblies didn't fulfill the democratic ideal I'd hoped they would. They serve a good function. They're useful. But they don't solve the problem of democracy. And then also when I was in the legislature, I remember serving on a committee dealing with landlord and tenant responsibilities. And we had people coming in and testifying about an eviction process. What are the obligations of both sides? And I noticed that my fellow committee members were only really paying attention to the lobbyists on behalf of the landlords. And so I pulled them. None of them were renters. I was no longer a renter. I had recently bought a house. I did an informal survey of the 150 house members. So far as I could tell, there was only one renter in the House of Representatives of Vermont. But about a third of her mother's rent. How representative of that? Now, I wonder what would happen if you picked 150 names out of the phone book? Now, in the old days, for those of you who were young, phone books are these things that everybody was in there. And I said, that would be more representative than this body. Because quite frankly, while some of the legislators are really gung-ho, great, brilliant people, there's also really idiots and fools and self-motivated narcissists. It's the whole gamut. They're not special. They're not better than ordinary people. They are different in this fact that they are more outgoing, willing to put themselves in front of people. And one of my favorite quotes is the charge of democracy is to bring forth the shy people. That's what democracy should be about. And that is not what elections do. Elections allow people to have a de minimis role in choosing which team of would-be rulers get to rule over them. Here's an important point. 99.9% of us, myself excluded here, will never be lawmakers. 99.9% of Americans never play a role in making public policy. They get to vote between these two teams, which team? They might hate them both, but that's the choice on offer. So it's problematic. And so I started studying democracy. And lo and behold, the original democracy in ancient Athens and in Greece was based on sortition. They didn't like elections. They considered elections oligarchical. In fact, Aristotle famously said that to use lotteries is democratic. To use elections is oligarchical. Because only people with wealth who are well connected who have power already have any chance of winning elections. Now, on a small scale like Burlington, you have to say, I'm talking more like Congress, right? But still, in ancient Athens, most of us have only ever heard of the ecclesia, the assembly, where all the citizens came together. But no, that's not what the key thing for democracy was. It was the randomly selected bodies. The Boulet, the Council 500, which set the agenda and prepared the resolutions for the ecclesia. It was the courts that could overrule the ecclesia, were randomly selected, 500 or 1,000 randomly selected citizens. In the reformed Athenian democracy after 405 BC, they took away all lawmaking authority from the ecclesia, from the assembly, and invested it, the citizens did, invested it in randomly selected legislative panels. We never learned any of that in school. I was a political science major, never heard any of this. The fact is that the Athenians themselves considered lotteries to be the key tool for democracy, and elections were dangerous. They only used elections for people with special, unique skills, like they elected their generals. There are certain people that they didn't want to pick by lottery. Mostly they would pick them in groups, in panels. So fast forward, I was talking about democracy. Over 2,000 years, it was understood by all political theorists in the West that democracy meant using lotteries. And elections were natural to an aristocracy. That was well understood. And in fact, the framers of our constitution understood that as well. They rejected democracy, they elected lotteries because, as James Madison said, he wanted government of the natural aristocracy. They objected to the hereditary aristocracy of monarchs, but they believed people like them, the well-to-do white men, could be the natural aristocracy, and the natural aristocracy would naturally win elections. So that was the frame of our government. We understand that people like Madison disdained democracy. They did not want a democracy. They equated that with mob rule. Madison famously said in debates that he was afraid that if we made the Senate have a turnover too rapidly and had quickly... Some people were saying the Senate should serve for life. If we had it more democratic, that would imperil the property rights of the wealthy. Well, he didn't use the word wealthy. He said of the... That was the point, though. So this is an important thing, that democracy does not mean elections. For thousands of years, it did not mean elections. Now, almost everybody, not just in this room, but everywhere at the UN, they'll say in the Charter of Human Rights, they'll say that the right to a vote in an election, in a free and fair election, is fundamental democratic right. But I say, no, that that is only a tool to establish which aristocrats, which elites, will rule over the ordinary people. It does not allow for self-rule. What does allow for self-rule is the jury model. Randomly selected people coming together for a defined period, being paid, bringing in all the expert witnesses, conflicting points of view, hearing all the sides, and the diversity of that group allows them to make better decisions than a relatively homogeneous group, which is at a congressional level anyway, mostly older, white, rich men. And that homogeneous group doesn't have certain basic knowledge that a group that includes a single mother and a blind person and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. By bringing in people from all walks of life, to really find common ground, here's the key thing. Politicians thrive on battle. The goal is to motivate their constituents to come out and vote. The way to do that they have learned. It's not that they're evil, they have learned. The way to do that is through fear. Fear of the other party. I have talked to right-wing groups and I talk about how bad politicians are, and they all nod their heads. Libertarian groups, they agree, politicians are horrible. I talked to left-wing groups, they agree, politicians are horrible. The fact is most of us believe that the things that we have come to understand, if we could just get a group of ordinary people in a room and explain it to them and get all the facts, they'd agree with us. Whether I would be a Trump supporter or a socialist or whatever my views are, I tend to believe that if I could get people together and give them the facts, they'd agree with me. And that is the beauty of sortition of democratic lotteries, the potential to be in a non-partisan way. I'm going to sort of end here. There will be some questions and answers later on, I think. But one of the most important things that I think I've come to is the humbling of the giving up of my certainty. I was a politician. I jokingly refer to myself as a recovering politician. I always thought that I knew best. I always thought that I had figured out the good policy. So did the others. And I have finally come to the point of view, say I might be wrong. And, but what I would trust is 150, 200 randomly selected citizens coming together with no hidden agendas, listening to all the facts, bringing in the expert witnesses, stipulating which things are speculation, which things are lies, which things are true, and then coming to a conclusion. They might come to a policy decision that I disagree with, but I would live with that because that kind of democracy is automatically self-correcting. If they make a bad decision, the next jury is going to come and say, you know what, that didn't work. We're going to change that. So democracy of ordinary people from all walks of life is what democracy is about. Elections are not what democracy is about. I have tons more I can say, but I don't want to monopolize things and we're going to actually, I should say one more thing before I finish, which is this idea is not pie in the sky, pie. It is happening. There have been hundreds of citizens assembly, close to a thousand in all over the world, ordinary people coming to talk about climate change, about in France they had recently on whether they should allow for euthanasia, end of life decisions, on biodiversity, on all kinds of municipal issues, global issues, national issues. There have been citizens assembly on a national level in many countries. Some of them are having them all the time and in a few places like Belgium and Paris, the city of Paris has a permanent revolving citizens assembly of ordinary people coming together randomly selected. So this is not just a crazy idea from a few people in Burlington. This is a global movement. It is mushrooming. United States is just way behind the curve and hasn't heard about it. But up in Canada and all around the world it is a dynamic growing movement. So unless Jesse or Tevin think there's something I really need to mention, or should I just, okay, all right. I've gone on plenty. I'm good. Okay, so democratic lotteries, the wave of the future. All right. All right. Thank you, Terry. And it is, by the way, just again, so cool for me to see Terry again in this room, which I know he was a city councillor in back in the 80s. And I've watched the old videos of the old council in those days and some of them were here, some of the old folks from that time. And so it's cool to see another movement for change, political change happening in this room. That's pretty cool. And what Terry reminds us is just points out how the flaws we're seeing happen all across the world stem from the electoral process. That it's just a byproduct of that. And I also want to mention, we have a number of elected officials in this room who we appreciate so much. And what our next speaker is going to talk about, who Tevin's going to introduce, Alex, is how this model works right now with our elected officials and within this system. So we can start doing this right now. But before we get to Alex, I just want to introduce Tevin Goldberg, who's going to quickly say a few things and introduce two others who happen to make it up from New York on this stuff. But Tevin, my co-conspirator on this, and he's just going to say a few things about what we're working on. Hi, everyone. Yes, my name is Tevin. It's kind of an unusual name. It's like Evan with a T. But everybody's been pronouncing it correctly, so that's great. So thank you again for coming. I mean, you have no idea how much this means to see human faces in here. Like, I've been putting posters up for the last month. I've been arguing with Jesse about this. It's terrifying to do something like this. So, you know, I feel very supported, and it's just kind of a rush to hear all of this kind of these things that we talk about at the Democracy Creative Office or that Terry and I go on and on about an e-mail chain and stuff to actually hear it expressed in person is really amazing. So I'll introduce myself a little bit if you're wondering who I am. And so I guess I kind of got into the Burlington political world totally by accident because I just found Jesse on Craigslist and became his roommate a little over a year ago. And I was obviously interested in politics and philosophy and all of that kind of stuff. For a long time, I moved to Vermont in 2014 to go to Middlebury College, which is also where Terry went before me. I kind of fell in love with the place and especially the political culture and the tradition of activism and everything that has kind of put Vermont, or set it apart from other places, just this kind of spirit of doing things a little bit differently that is very inspiring and it's the reason why we don't have billboards and things like that. So the house that Jesse and I live in, along with our other roommate, Peter, who lives here tonight, and Jesse's cat, is kind of amazing because he used to be inhabited by a person named Murray Bookchin, who is a left-wing eco-anarchist philosopher that's lived in Burlington for decades and was always arguing with Terry back in the day. There's great videos of him basically telling him that he's not left-wing enough. But anyway, Murray Bookchin lived in this house and wrote a book called The Ecology of Freedom in this house and then Jesse and I just kind of ended up living in it together, strangely, and then Terry showed up to tune my piano and it's like, what's going on with this house? It's kind of crazy. And I had actually read that book before. So in that moment, I realized, okay, I think we got to do something here. This is just way too serendipitous to ignore. And things like that don't tend to happen very often in life. Anyway, the more that we get into this, the more we realize that we're not alone and that there really is this common-sense movement all around the world emerging in favor of citizen deliberation. And it's not because we all hate politicians, as Jesse was alluding to. It's because this is just something that should be happening for everything. And it doesn't just have to be in politics. It can be in schools and businesses and neighborhoods, et cetera. I mean, it's just taking this beautifully simple idea of rolling the dice and seeing what you get. In my case, I randomly selected myself to be Jesse's roommate. And now here I am. And just kind of opening up to this magical possibility of what happens when you put people together and kind of in good faith have them reason through things. So we've been meeting all sorts of really amazing people, virtually and increasingly in person, that are also believing this and have all sorts of fantastic ideas and things to do to implement them. We have two folks in the room who are going to come up and give some short remarks as well. Forrest Sparks and Philip Lindsay, who are living in New York City. And they are going to also be presenting tomorrow for our weekly Thought Club discussion group, which some folks here are part of. We host that at our office in the Soda Plant, and it's a very unbounded to-hour conversation about philosophy, whatever people kind of just come in and present on something they're interested in, and then we talk about it. And so this is the poster for that. You can definitely talk to me afterwards. It's at 6 p.m. tomorrow in the Soda Plant. So anyway, I've been talking and talking. So I think I'll have Philip and Forrest come out now. But before I do that, I will also just briefly say that our final speaker of the night is Alex Ranieri, who is a program co-director of the Organization Healthy Democracy, which is back in my home state of Oregon. And they are kind of leading the charge in the United States on really making these Citizens' Assemblies happen and working with participatory citizen government in California and Oregon, and it continues to expand. So this is not, as we've said, just kind of a crazy little political science idea. This is a practical thing that is happening, and events like this one today hopefully will allow that to spread. So Philip and Forrest want to come up here and chat, and thanks again, everybody, for coming, and I'll leave it at that. Hi, everyone. Just very briefly, my name is Philip Lindsey. I'm from Philadelphia but came up from New York. I work at the Hanah Rent Center at Bard College, where we run programming and workshops for teachers, both learning what's going on around the world, around participatory democracy and deliberative democracy, and how to bring that into the classroom. There's been examples of students using sortition to run student councils. Harvard even rewrote it, student constitution using sortition recently. And the other program we run is for civil servants, elected officials, and activists to learn about these tools and think about how to co-create them in their localities. So last year we did a workshop for two days in New York. We're going to do another one this year, where we brought over 50 elected officials, public servants, and other community leaders to learn how to think about these together in cohorts. And we have fellowships to do this, and we're, you know, so if you're a teacher or you're a civil servant looking to learn more, please visit our website, the Hanah Rent Center at Bard College. We're also going to run a reading group with Terry that I'm really looking forward to, and then Forrest, want to come up and talk a little bit. Hi, y'all. Name's Forrest. So I'm a process designer and facilitator in these deliberative spaces. So specifically recently, out of some of the workshops that came out of New York, city officials in New York got interested in this. So the Civic Engagement Commission, and actually a democratically created office, was interested in sortitions. So they brought me on, and we were able to implement a participatory budgeting process, but that has deliberative aspects, randomly selecting residents so that they're demographically representative of the public that they're making decisions on, their budgetary decisions. And so we did this all across the five boroughs. And outside of that, some of the other work I'm doing, I'm going to be teaching a course at the New School, which is a university in New York on the design for democracy. And so I think the biggest thing I want to make a point here is that these processes, you can find also ways to integrate them into the infrastructure that you already have and start experimenting with them. Of course, we'd like to see large assemblies happen on divisive policy issues, but random selection and long form deliberation, bringing everyday folks to the table to decide and design on the policies is not just a dream in the sky, it's happening all around the world. So I would encourage you, if you guys are within politics, within government or just a citizen, if you're starting to think about where these processes can be integrated, where we can have deliberation and actually have a say in decision making power on our government around us. But I will pass it back off to democracy creative. I'm not going to talk for very long, I promise. So we're going to hear from Alex over Zoom, actually. That's why we have this screen up here. She's not able to join us in person. It's like 3,000 miles away, so I understand. And Alex is going to kind of give us her 20-minute or so stump speech on citizens' assemblies and also share with us some more details about some case studies for this. And yeah, so that I think, you don't need to hear from me anymore. So we'll just make sure that the Zoom is working. And if it takes a second to get that going, feel free to go and get more pie or seltzer. Thanks. Share with us some more details about some case studies for this. And yeah, so that, I think you don't need to hear from me anymore. So we'll just make sure that the Zoom is working. And if it takes a second to get that going, feel free to go and get more pie or seltzer. Thanks. Share with us some more details about some case studies for this. And so that I think. Wonderful. Can everyone hear me okay? Ready. I'm going to assume we're good to go. I just switched from the live stream over the Zoom call. But Jesse, feel free to let me know if there are any issues. I've got confirmation. Perfect. Hello, everyone. I'm so happy to be here with you all from across the country. My name is Alex Ranieri program co-director with healthy democracy coming to you from Oregon. Just wonderful present presentations already this evening. I wish I could be there in person. But it is a bit far. So I'll be continuing this conversation as Tevin and Jesse have queued up from a kind of practical what this looks like in practice and the UX perspective. So we'll be talking about reimagining specific participation through democratic lotteries and deliberation. So first, just by way of introduction, healthy democracy, we believe in elevating the voices of everyday people, bringing new faces into public decision making and designing a more collaborative democracy together. A tiny bit about our history. We created one of the best known reforms in the field of deliberative democracy, which was called the citizens initiative review. That process used getting, I'm going to just turn up my volume here in case that helps. That process took a representative sample from across an entire state. And then those randomly selected panelists would actually analyze ballot measures and create more balanced and trustworthy voter information that ended up in the voter information guide, the voter pamphlet. So since 2008, we've run that process in five different states in the US and two countries internationally. It was actually the first deliberative reform to be institutionalized in Oregon state law in 2011 and has become one of the most renowned and most studied deliberative processes in the world. So since in the past few years, taken that expertise and made a pivot and now we're focusing those two same components, democratic lotteries and deliberation at the local government level. So for municipal decision making. And have done it for a few first ever's on the west coast here in 2019 in Oregon, the first ever municipal lottery selected panel. That's our name for citizen assembly. In 2020, the first ever on a major planning topic in Oregon. And in 2022, just last year, the first ever at the municipal level in California. So first a bit about the context, why we're here, why this is important. This will be, you know, map on to Terry's and others kind of problem statements this evening, but with a bit of a twist, I hope it's not too duplicative. So really at healthy democracy, we see the most fundamental kind of. Challenge in our democracy that this process answers is that many of us don't see ourselves represented in our democratic institutions. So looking at rates of participation in civic and political activities across income brackets, we see that wealthier folks are far more likely to participate disproportionately high rates compared to their percentage percentage of the general population. And then again, looking at rates of participation across racial groups, we see that white folks are disproportionately highly represented as compared with our communities of color. And finally, many studies have showed recently that there's a rising sense of disempowerment of disengagement and also really disinvestment in rural communities. So this is just one statistic that shows that among rural youth who are living in civic deserts far higher rate than urban or suburban youth, we see about 60% of rural youth are living in places where they may only have zero. This is defined as zero or one institutional resource or kind of point of access to civic and political engagement in their community. And I think that's really indicative of larger trends that we see in rural America. And then secondly, we really don't see public decision making as something we can all do. We've been taught that the policymaking, as Terry said, is something that elected officials do. We should just sit back and vote every few years. And, you know, even our public processes, like showing up at the city council meeting or serving on a border commission are really processes that are built and designed for a select few people. They assume familiarity with a very specific way of interacting. Often that looks like Robert's rules of border, very formulaic and formal. They undervalue lived experience, not accessible to most of us who rely on lived experience to navigate policy decisions. And again, they're very debate oriented. So as Terry, I think, speaks about very eloquently, it's about picking whose team you want to be on instead of really coming into a process through a collaborative orientation. And it shouldn't come as a surprise that all of this has consequences for our democracy writ large. In the US, we're seeing rising dissatisfaction democracy. And I think it's important to keep this to some of these core foundational problems around representation and accessibility of our, of our democratic institutions. So now let's talk about this new approach. I'd help the democracy use the term lottery selected panels. And this is exactly the same model as citizens assemblies, citizens journeys around the world that goes by many, many different names, but using the core, the same core concepts. So this new approach, we envision democracy where our public decision making reflects our diversity. Where everybody, not just a few people participate in really in depth policymaking. Where expertise is both valued and questioned. And where our government is a tool that we all use together, not just an entity that does things to us or makes decisions on our behalf. So these are the two core components again of this model, democratic lotteries, who's in the room in depth deliberation is what happens in the room. So democratic lotteries really uniquely guarantee demographic representation. Usually across seven or more demographic factors and panelists who are selected through the process are then substantially supported to participate through stipends, expense reimbursements and other things. And then in depth deliberation really changes the heart of decision making itself. So panelists consider a wide variety of information and then collaboratively work together to write policy recommendations. Now we'll dive deeper into each of those components. So who's in the room, the democratic lottery. So stepping back just for a moment. This is the landscape of most forms of civic engagement that we're familiar with. So back to pie. These two slices of the democracy pie are processes that are open to anyone. So this is voting. This is showing up at a public hearing city council meeting or processes that are open by specific invitation to specific stakeholder engagement, things like that. But we think there's an essential slice of this democracy pie that's missing. But really, as I hope you all would agree, after having just eaten some pie, we don't need to divvy up the pie. We can have more pies and truly each of these methods has its unique benefits and challenges. So, and we need them all for a thriving, healthy democratic landscape. So processes that are open to anyone, like surveys, hearings are really great and that they're super participatory. Anyone can participate, at least in theory. So we know in practice that self-selection means that the same individuals are showing up time and time again and that it tends to be restricted to fairly thin participation methods and often debate-oriented. Specific invitation, absolutely essential. Things like stakeholder negotiations allows us to outreach to particular communities who are experiencing a particular impact of a policy decision or who've been marginalized in the past, can be very targeted and specialized. However, often we see with this, too, that the same community leaders are being tapped time and time again. It's often the same individuals who are participating and can be top-down in orientation rather than really grassroots. So lottery selection is just an additive element here, additive methodology. It guarantees new and diverse folks in the room, so we're not just aiming towards representation. We're actually able to guarantee that. And then it provides real time and space for folks to deliberate deeply with one another. And of course, the downsides are that that requires time and investment. So these are the three basic elements of the democratic lottery process, kind of step-by-step. First, as a practitioner organization, we'll be brought in by a city, for example. And the first step is to send out an invitation mailer to between 5,000 and 15,000 randomly selected residential addresses. And this is what creates that pool of potential panelists. So those addresses are selected at random and that captures folks and proactively invites folks often who've never participated before in something like this. Then we work with that government agency to set some demographic criteria. So some common ones we use are age, race and ethnicity, educational attainment, gender, and others. And that determines the proportional representation on the panel. So how many panelists within each group we're looking for. And then often in a public selection event, we select a panel using open-source software called panelot that is both random and reflective of those demographic targets. The other really crucial piece here is that we reduce barriers to participation. So the reason why we can get that demographically representative group in the room is that we cover all costs. So panelists receive a living wage stipend, reimbursements for travel, child and elder care, any loaner technology if needed. They have direct support. So one-on-one onboarding, ongoing support throughout the process to really make folks feel comfortable in that space who may have never opted into that before. And then language access, of course, translation interpretation. So this is the demographics of a recent project we did, which I'll talk a little bit more about in a few minutes. And this really demonstrates the need for the democratic lottery. So if we look at just this first row, this is the race and ethnicity category, that first pie graph back to the pies is the general population. You can see Eugene Oregon, it's about two-thirds white. And then who replied to the mailing so that initial stratification, or not stratification, that initial randomization is much more predominantly white than the general population. So that's that self-selection bias that we're usually, that's just two shows up in our public processes. The reason for the democratic lottery is to adjust that closer to the general population. And most of the time, that third pie chart would look exactly like that general population pie chart. And what you get is beautiful. It's a city in one room, kind of a microcosm of the community altogether. So in this case during COVID in one virtual room, or a few years ago, an entire state in one real physical room together. Okay, so now pivoting over to what happens in the room. What is deliberation? These are the, you know, core themes, core aspects of that process. So first, once a panel is seated, they engage in an in-depth learning phase. So typically, you know, it doesn't at least hours of just learning about the topic from a well-balanced group of background experts, stakeholders, they intake all this information, interview people from many sides of the topic. And then they deliberate, often in iterative small groups, they talk about their own values, the information that they've heard, and then they begin to generate some policy options. And then in the third stage, they begin to actually craft real recommendations written entirely in their own words and delivered directly to decision makers. And ideally, we also incorporate feedback loops. So opportunities for the panel to collaborate directly with decision makers, or kind of pass work back and forth to really maximize their policy influence. So here's the whole process again, just as an overview, a refresher, we send out that invitation mailer to five to 15,000 households if we're talking about a city. We conduct the democratic lottery in which a random but representative panel is selected. The panel learns everything they can learn about the topic and information gathering phase. They do a deep dive into deliberation through iterative structured discussion, and then they produce a policy report. So the next few slides just talk about the principles. Like why do we do this work? Why do we do this work? Why do we do this work? And how do we get the values inherent to it? First off is inclusivity. So we're using really proactive recruitment methods, not passively advertising on the radio or something. We're going to people's houses and asking them to participate and designing with an accessibility driven lens. And that really allows new voices. Usually 90 plus percent of panelists are going to participate. Second of all, representation. So again, we're not working towards representation, but we're actually guaranteeing that the panel is reflective of many diversities all at once. Integrity. So there's been decades of research on these types of processes that we are designing in accordance with. And these processes are as transparent as possible. You can go look at just an ungodly number of our last process in California. If you'd like to, I don't know why you would, but and every single one of our processes is independently evaluated. Next collaboration. So again, panelists work through really structured iterative process with the aid of professional moderators. That's really key. And that is all with the design purpose of fostering more respectful, evidence driven exchange that also accounts for lived experience, of course. And lastly, but perhaps the most importantly, the panel is not just a focus group. They're not just taking a survey. They have power. They are empowered over their process and with the real possibility of impacting policy decisions. Okay. So now I'm going to spend a few minutes talking about case studies. How is this being used around the world? And then a couple specific case studies here on the West Coast. So around the world, as Terry mentioned, in over 600 cases to date, but I'm starting to lose track of the exact number because it's taking off so quickly. Lottery selected panels or citizens assemblies are being used in political situations that are high stakes, contentious, complex and technical, and really everyday people from all walks of life can handle some of the thorniest topics in our policy worlds today. And the deliberative wave, this is a term often tossed around in our field to also, as Terry mentioned, while these processes go back to ancient Greece and India, actually over the last 50 years or so, they've really seen a resurgence. And in the last 10 or 15 years, we're seeing kind of the crest of this deliberative wave internationally. So this is a process that Healthy Democracy conducted in Eugene, Oregon a couple of years ago on the topic of some new housing code changes that were mandated by a new state law. This was an incredibly contentious state law and the city of Eugene needed to figure out how to implement it, despite there still being quite a bit of conflict about the nature of the law and the code changes that they were required to make. And so they brought us in, they did a robust community engagement process that included a panel. We selected 29 panelists, residents age 16 and up, across seven demographic factors, including race and ethnicity, gender, educational attainment, geography, experience of a disability, housing status. And the panel worked as this was during COVID over 15 online sessions, mostly in the evenings. And they produced a series of four reports on how exactly those zoning code revisions should be made. So first they looked after, you know, gathering information from a couple dozen different presenters on the topic. They produced a report on principles. So what values and criteria should those zoning code changes uphold and adhere to? The city went and did some work on initial code concepts, brought that back to the panel, the panel reviewed it and give some high level feedback. This is an example of those feedback loops I was talking about. The city then wrote some initial code language and brought it back to the panel said, you know, is this what you had in mind? Does this meet your principles? And the panel evaluated it and produced some low level feedback for the city. And then they also produced some recommendations about public engagement in general. And of course we didn't tell them to do this, but they always ask for more of this kind of democracy. The next case study I want to talk about was in Petaluma, California last year, the Petaluma fairgrounds advisory panel, which was the most intensive lottery selected panel for citizens assembly in the U.S. to date, which we're very proud of. The topic was a planning topic this time. So for a different kind of planning topic, the future of a 55 acre fairgrounds property that was at the center of town, the city wanted to know what was the best use, what was the community's vision for this site as it was undergoing some changes in management. The context, again, this was highly contentious. Everybody had an idea of what should happen to the fairgrounds property. The city brought us in to do a different kind of civic engagement knowing that kind of politics as usual would produce the same divisive argumentative kind of stalemate that they were, that they were in when we were brought in to do this process. We selected 36 panelists using those same demographic factors. And in this case they worked for 12 days in person work. Those are 12 full days over the course of two months. And it really in depth decision making. So they presented three reports to the city council and a state appointed fair board again on principles. So what values should guide the decision. And what should be considered. And what should be considered. Some specific site use options that could be considered. And then a final report with recommendations for the fairgrounds property. Okay. This is just one that there are so many results from that process. And I'd be happy to answer questions about it. But this, I think is one that's nice to highlight. In the exit survey. After the Petaluma process. I think that's one of the things that I think is nice to highlight. And I think that's one of the things that I think is nice to highlight is the fact that a lot of panelists agreed with the statement that even people who strongly disagree can make sound decisions if they sit and talk. And then again, this is stepping back out to an international statistic, but just want to highlight the other unique thing about these processes is that. They have real policy impact. So in around two thirds of cases around the world. So they're often given kind of a degree of policy credibility and and authority. That's quite unique in our civic engagement landscape. Right. Here, just a few benefits. This is a closing slide. To recap kind of the core ideas here. So these processes foster ownership of republic decision making and really mutual trust in government. They're not just building. Residents trust in government, but also building government's trust that residents can do really tricky problem solving when it comes to policy. Secondly, they boost diversity and civic participation. They reduce those disparities that we saw in the beginning. Set of slides. And they increase access for groups who have historically been underrepresented and marginalized in these types of democratic processes. They promote evidence driven discourse and really showcase what it would look like to have a more co-operative and collaborative politics. And then they surface new ideas, untapped ideas that often, you know, a group of elected officials in a room may not have thought of because they just don't have the lived experience. So it really encourages this co-production of knowledge and policy options that we truly think is a benefit to all parties. Lastly, we always like to end with a quote from a panelist. This is Jose from the Jean project. You engaged us in the actual work of democracy and that has left an imprint. I feel like this is community. With that, thank you so much for the space. And I'm really looking forward to answering some of your questions. Okay. All right. Thank you so much, Alex. Thank you so much, Alex. Alex, can you hear me? So we're going to try to make it so that Alex can hear me. We just have a, I'm going to text Alex. But while we're getting that figured out, I just want to draw the point home. The reason this is so exciting for all of us who have been organizing this and working on this is it's a way to deal with all of the problems we're not dealing with at every level. So it's very exciting. Are we, how are we doing? I think I can hear you in the Zoom room now. Can you hear me? Okay. Yeah, yeah. We're trying to get it out so that, so you can hear me now. Good. Right. Cool. All right. So what we're going to do now is, and I don't know if you heard me, but thank you so much, Alex. That was an amazing presentation. We appreciate it. You got a nice round of applause. Now we're going to open it up for some Q and A. So I think we'll get these wireless mics. Check, check, check. So if you have a question, raise your hand, we'll come bring you the mic and you can address it to Terry or Alex or anyone you want. So I saw Ali's hand first. I'll go. Thanks. First of all, thank you for all of this. This is all fascinating, interesting. And I love it generally. And I can see how it might be better than what we have. I'm still, I'm going to use that example of 12 days of over two months you had this citizen assembly. And I'm thinking to myself, who can really afford to contribute 12 days over two months to this process? I can. So I'm going to be represented, but I don't know if you're a lawyer, you're a public defender, you have cases, you're a doctor, you're working two minimum wage jobs, whatever it might be. I would think that most people would not be in a position to do that. Am I wrong? You're not wrong, but the fact is it's like, it could be like jury duty. People can be excused from a jury, but the idea is, then you go on the list, you're going to be, they're going to keep calling you until it fits. Like if you're starting a new business and you're working 60 hours a week or you're a new mom and you have a little baby at home, there are going to be reasons why you can't. But it would be paid work. Ideally, I mean, we're talking about a transition process here. Initially, they're not going to be hundreds of these things with thousands of people being involved all the time. We want to get a few off the ground so that people can see it because we're not going to do a lot of these until people see that they work. I'm sorry, did I misunderstand? Is this mandatory or voluntary? It won't be mandatory probably for generations. But the idea is, like jury duty, some people get excused. And so if you were called, you would defer. But the point is the sample that will be called will be demographically representative of the community. Hopefully, there will be a single mother there who was able to make it. There will be a lawyer who was able to take time off to do it. The experience of people in these assemblies, and Alex can confirm this, is overwhelmingly positive. Some people said it was the best experience of their life. Yeah, if I could just add to that briefly. I mean, certainly, I hear the concern and there's not perfect representation, right? So we're not necessarily capturing everyone. Not everyone can take 12 days off of work. But I guess I'll just mainly point out that there is a really wide range and duration of the designs of these processes. So 12 days is on the pretty far end of the spectrum in terms of length. I'd say most of them average between four and eight days total. And that's always a consideration, right? How is the duration impacting the representation in the room? But we also try to, you know, use all these other measures to make it as accessible as possible. So we're on the phone with people individually asking, you know, if you're interested in participating, what are the barriers you're experiencing? Could we help you line up childcare? Could we, you know, make sure that you're, I mean, we try to announce it in time for people to take off work, you know, from a job a month in advance. You know, we're trying to look at all these little barriers people might experience to being involved in a substantial way like that. But, you know, of course it's not everyone who's going to be able to participate. So I'm going to out myself. I'm an elected leader right now, but I don't take offense to any of this because I think this is a really curious and important concept because I do serve in the Vermont legislature, which is still predominantly older men, landlords, affluent, not a lot has changed since Terry was, frankly, in the legislature. But I have a question because in a small state like Vermont, we see this a lot as policymakers. We don't have a lot of data that actually reflects who is living in Vermont in this sense of racial demographics, sexual orientation, gender identity, all down the list. So if we're trying to actually do a randomized lottery and truly have those demographic pieces so we have a more representative body come together for whatever purpose, I'm curious how you get around that and know who you're trying to recruit knowing that also we're living in political times where people don't want to be outed necessarily because, you know, Vermont's not in a bubble. And I guess the second part of it is, and just in this last week, the city of Burlington's past, well we had a charter change which got vetoed by the governor around all resident voting here in the city. So I'm curious if citizenship has anything to do. I know the title has it here for this event, but I'm curious if there's really an all resident push here around really having access to local engagement that has something to do with actual citizenship status. Sorry, I was on mute. I can respond to that first if that's all right, Terry. Yeah, so we typically, and I think what's common in most places in the world is using census or similar data to create those demographic targets, which obviously the census is imperfect in so many ways and so it can absolutely be done with other demographic data, but you're right. It does require some data on the kind of rates of, or the general population for the demographic targets that you're using. We have experimented with using kind of previous rates of engagement within the city and similar processes to kind of ask has anyone been underrepresented in the past? Maybe we need to account for that, but typically it's just one to one direct proportionate representation using census data. And if there was any more nuance to that question, I'd be happy to go back to it. But then to the citizenship question, we only, we do not only select citizens by any means. That's why we tend to not use the word citizen in our materials because it has kind of a divisive error and some exclusive connotations in the U.S. and so yeah, only residents. And I think that is generally the push, although it's just hard to find another word that's as powerful as citizens. So that's a little bit of what you're seeing there. And everyone just raise your hand who we have. I just want to see what we got. All right, we're going to do our best and then come back and forth. Hi, my name is Andy Simon. I have served on the neighborhood planning assembly steering committee in our ward. Just finish that. One of the problems with the NPAs in Burlington, there are there are problems, is that people don't have a sense of real power. And the figures that you gave, one, at least two-thirds of the cases, at least one-half, sounds like a third of the time if my math is right, policymakers accepted the recommendation. That wouldn't inspire me to feel like what I was doing had a tremendous impact. I believe that the impact that you've described on the people who participate is very real. And I think that is also the case in the NPAs in Burlington. But in terms of real impact, it feels to me like it could shade toward window dressing. And I wonder about that. That is a very big concern. In Europe, where they've been doing this in Australia, often like in Australia, if a city is going to use the citizens assembly, the organizing organization, the New Democracy Foundation gets a contractual arrangement saying, do you agree to implement the decision of the assembly? If the council doesn't agree to that, they don't do it. So they compel not legally, it's not really a contract, but it's a moral contract. So in Australia, in virtually every case, the policy is actually implemented, the citizens assembly recommends. Like in South Australia, the Prime Minister wanted to put a nuclear waste dump for the whole part of the world for the income, and the citizens assembly said no, and he was livid, but that was the decision. So the danger is that, yes, it could be misused as window dressing, and the goal is to make sure that it is structured so that the decisions have impact. I'll just give one example of a kind of small step that I would love to see, something like in Burlington. What if we said the city council is trying to decide, say, building hikes, controversial issue. There's no right or wrong answer to how tall buildings should be in Burlington. But the council could say, you know what, rather than just making a vote here, we're going to set up an assembly, and we promise to enact whatever the assembly decides. So the initial one should be decisive. You're right, it's a big issue, and it has to be done right. Just a quick follow-up. Since we're talking about the various things that have happened in this room, in Contoy's auditorium, I want to just recall one of the great victories of democracy in Burlington was in 1992 when the environmental, when the EPA said, we are going to take all the soil at the Pine Street Barge Canal and push it over into a giant toxic waste dump next to the lake, and you have 30 days to comment on that. Well, the citizen of Burlington, I'm sure Terry participated in this as well, said, no. And they had to extend the 30-day comment period to six months, and then the EPA for the first time in their relatively short history at that point had to scrap the plan entirely, created not randomly at all, but created a coordinating committee that consisted of various stakeholders, and they worked for five years and came up with a better plan. So it has happened here, too, not in this random selection mode, but in terms of participatory democracy, and I'm sure that EPA was also living. Can I just one respond? Yes and no. The problem is in most parts of the country, the communities that organize that successfully and get their way are the more white, higher income communities, and it ends up being black and poor communities that don't have that organization, and so yes and no. It might have been a success for Burlington, but it was not a success for democracy, it was a success for class privilege, I would argue, because I'm not poor, and I tend to those protests, so it's not that it's a it was a wonderful thing, but it was not a sign of democracy working, it was a sign of democracy not working and protests stopping bad democratic process. It was better to have a randomly selected body decide the policy at the outset rather than the EPA, but anyway. That's my biased opinion. I just wanted to identify where I'm coming from. I gave a talk in February to the Thought Club, some of you might remember it, on my book, Marxist Ethics Within Western Political Theory, and that book, if there was one theory that it was directed against, it was Lenin. I mean Lenin laid the foundation for a terrible tyranny in every country that practiced Marxism, and yet Marxism is a wonderful theory. Okay, that's what I said in that talk, but what was wrong with Lenin? Where was he coming from? Well, State and Revolution is his book, and it seems to have been replicated in every single country, Mao's writings, Kastro's writings, everybody's, and he advocated no liberal constitutional state. He said let's talk garbage. Anything coming from the West, that's garbage in terms of political theory. What we want is Savvias, which were our assemblies, and what that led to, the complete rejection of the fundamental ideas of Western liberalism, separation of powers, courts defending rights, led to the most terrible tyrannies which destroyed the reputation of Marxism. So I'm not saying that the idea of assemblies is bad, but it's got to be complemented by other things. I think you can hear me. This is kind of in the weeds process design question, so getting a really diverse group in the room, I imagine another aspect of it is how there's a lot of power and what information gets to get into that room, and so I'm curious about designing that process. What information how do you decide what information gets in the room? Yeah, fantastic question, and something that was really kind of missing from this version of our presentation, but that's so important, and there are multiple different designs for doing it. The one we typically use is to have a diverse, balanced stakeholder committee that seated a couple of months before the panel is actually seated, and they get together and deliberate about who the informational presenters should be that the panel will need to hear from. Typically there's some combination of an initial slate of informational presenters that's selected by that group that itself, again, is kind of reflective of many different demographics and stakeholders, and then also the government agency who's convening the process will typically get a certain number of pages to present kind of introductory background information to the panel, and then the panel itself, very importantly not only are they digging into their own lived experience, but they're also working with kind of a menu of additional presenters and additional information that they might want to select from, call on based on kind of a gaps analysis that they do after they've spent a couple initial days in that learning phase, so really kind of setting them up with an initial slate, a landscape, many stakeholders use, and then really the panel is empowered to do its own kind of calling of witness testimony, you could say, and digging into other research itself. Hi, thank you. And thank you both for your presentations. I'm really excited about this idea and to learn more, and your question was one of my questions as well, but another question I have is about the process of making the policy recommendations because I imagine at the end of the process there's still disagreement. So I'm just curious about, and that might be different depending on the different case studies, but are the recommendations made by consensus? Is it ultimately majority rule and if so, for the latter, then how is dissent incorporated into the policy recommendations at the end of the day? That's a great question. Terry, do you mind if I start this one off too and then I'll handle it to you? Okay. Go for it, Alex, go for it. Perfect. Who has mics in the room. Yeah, so it's a really it's a really good question and I should also say for all of these questions there's a ton of diversity within our field so I can normally speak to how healthy democracy does these processes. There seems to be really a move towards this idea of 80 plus percent consensus recommendations that's gaining some traction internationally. We have traditionally not used the word consensus in our processes rather kind of we talk about creating space for folks to find agreement or find common ground together really creating the right conditions for that but never forcing consensus and always making sure that there's space for minority views for dissenting views directly in the report so it really is this balance of not wanting to overly simplify or push people to agreement but really creating the conditions to find that agreement and yeah I'd say the most common standard these days for that is kind of highlighting aspects of the policy recommendations that have over a certain threshold of agreement which is often 80 percent sometimes you see 90 percent yeah. I'll just throw in that the amazing thing is that in politics we're used to things winning by 51 percent the parties who's got control and so on these processes work very differently people find that they actually agree about tremendous values that would never be apparent in a electrode body which is not the who's going to show the other side is foolish or evil so in the next election we can vote their side down so there's a lot of I participate in this as a politician when a new bill came forward my task from the other side my task was to find what I could say about the bill to show that they were fools or idiots or dangerous that was my task as a politician to get ready for the next election cycle now these people don't have any of that motivation and the fact is that almost all the deliberative processes hundreds of them they do find broad consensus now there will be issues that are simply it's A or B and there is no room for fiddling to find common ground so there will be scenarios where the problem with super majority requirement is that biases towards the status quo so right now it's in flux it's evolving it's part of the discussion there's no exactly right answer my question is if you have any real examples of the policies that people have recommended actually benefiting marginalized communities I think it's great that the idea is to be representative of everyone but I'm wondering if you're actually seeing in practice if that is happening I want to talk about one which many of you have heard about but may not realize Ireland legalized same sex marriage what you may not know is the politicians didn't want to touch that issue Catholic country they set up a randomly selected constitutional convention using sortition using a democratic lottery that randomly selected body of ordinary citizens recommended that they should go forward with same sex marriage as a constitutional amendment and put it directly to referendum and it passed overwhelmingly that's an example of a marginalized community carrying the day and there's some wonderful stories there's one where one person who had been abused as a child by same sex by homosexual and was dead set against having this he met a homosexual male on the assembly they became just friends and he understood a whole new perspective that he never thought he would share and he ended up voting for that in the assembly now it could have been the opposite scenario I don't want to sell democratic lotteries because we'll get the policies we want no that's not what it could be that a democratic lottery will develop a policy that everybody in this room would think is horrible but that's what democracy is about I was wondering if you could we got a little teaser about your design for multi body sortition I was wondering if you could just you sort of buried the lead of it you'd be giving us the tempered version I wonder if you give us the more full blown vision of democracy that you've sketched there's the immediate task which is to do some small scale hopefully policy driven decisions locally so that people can see it because the kind of reform I'm imagining isn't going to happen until people have seen a lot of examples of it really working of ordinary people making complex policy decisions so he's asking about what is my 200 year project although it's actually now it's the 50 year project because we're making so much progress my idea is that there would be assemblies like an agenda council that would set these are the issues that need to be addressed and they would put out a call to anybody in the community who has any ideas and anybody in the community who wants to be involved with policymaking could join let's say a 12 member interest panel that would draft proposals on that agenda item and there might be hundreds of these proposals who knows maybe only five we don't know but the idea is anybody who wants to be involved can be involved in drafting proposals they can have legal advice from lawyers if we have that kind of money it would go to a review council which would take all these raw material all these proposals they would weigh them they bring in the expert witnesses they maybe interview the people who have been on these interest panels they would narrow it down to a proposal to say this is what we should do maybe they would blend a few of them whatever send it back to them for a thing but a review panel also randomly selected would then say this is what we think is a good law or a new policy and the idea is the problem is the act of doing that reviewing makes them unqualified to then judge their own handiwork the problem is there's a danger of group think there's a danger of self-importance so the ideas of the body that drafts it doesn't get to say yes or no to making it a law instead a new jury gets called a large jury they just listen to the pro and con arguments for and against the law they can ask questions and then they vote and the idea is you'd also have bodies that would be reviewing the process to reform the process over time to improve it there's all kinds of pieces you would have but the idea is you one of the problems we have with legislatures is they do everything they draft the proposals they work on the proposals they advocate for against the proposals and then they vote on them and the problem is by having advocated they have lost their ability to judge what they have produced we need to judge that and did the writing that's a fundamental principle but in elected bodies it's completely gone out the window so I wrote a paper about multi body sortition and it's been adopted partially in Paris in their citizen assembly in East Belgium and so it's a model that is actually being implemented on a smaller scale but they have agenda councils and then they call one time bodies that will then work on that particular agenda item and then they're done so the idea is not just to do one assembly doing one thing but to have a whole milieu of assemblies each doing different tasks but that's I said that's my 200 year project. Thank you I wanted to find out if this assembly can be seated longer than several weeks like 12 months where they can look at multiple issues rather than just one issue and then they are released because if somebody has a job and they are only there for several weeks where they leave their job and then they have to go back to their job again it can create an uncertainty because not everybody has a job where they can go back to later on or maybe maybe not and on the second fold I do see that I say like the council out here they do have their jobs most of them and they still do their work as councilors can similar method be achieved for the assemblies where folks can still maintain having their jobs and then meet up say like in late afternoons or several months of you know several times of the month and then be able to submit whatever needs to be submitted to the council body. Thank you. Yeah absolutely and maybe I'll just clarify that in the Petaluma case study I said over the course of two months but that was largely weekends and so it was over the span of five separate weekends we designed it so that you know someone who works a Monday through Friday job which of course is not everyone would only have had to take off I believe four days of work so trying to minimize that but I mean to your first point absolutely these things can run much longer in duration you can spread those days out over a much longer period of time to lessen that impact and there are obviously pros and cons to each little bit of the design like that but I wanted to mention there's an example in Toronto actually of ongoing review panels or reference panels done by our colleagues in Canada an organization called MassLVP who convenes those and in that case they're actually standing review panels that look at many different planning topics and I believe the term is two years so they meet for I can't remember what the exact structure is but I think maybe two full day sessions and then shorter sessions in between and look at you know a whole bunch of different topics so there are a number of different designs like that and like the Osveldian model that's been mentioned which you know utilize a lot of selective group of people over you know a much longer span of time and potentially even on multiple policy topics and yes hopefully no one has to you know lose their job or find a different job after the process the idea is very much to make it accessible so folks don't have too much disruption to their lives I'll just add that it's being developed it's being experimented there's all kinds of different methods being used in Osveldian they serve for a year but they only do they meet like once a month or something like that the British Columbia one that I observed they met for I think 10 months like one or two weekends a month and then they would have a few other things so the duration and the intensity it's being invented on the fly and eventually over time we'll probably discover that for certain tasks they need to meet a lot and for certain other kinds of tasks it might be they pull it together like a jury for a criminal trial then they meet for you know they get off from their job and they meet for two weeks intensive and then they're done all designs are possible yes thank you for this opportunity this is very exciting I'm just wondering if there are opportunities where you can watch these panels either live or recorded either by topic or just all the way through the process now like I said all 90 hours of the pedaluma process is up on YouTube if you want to watch it you can go to healthydemocracy.org slash pedaluma and find the live stream recordings there so we try to make it as transparent as possible at least in plenary sessions so when all you know the full panel is together that's all publicly available when folks go into small group deliberations that's not live streamed just to maintain some sense of safety and privacy and candor and in those deliberative spaces but I'm actually not aware of other places you could watch the live stream of other processes do you know the answer to that Terry? some have I don't know which ones but yeah it's being embedded on the fly some live stream the entire process but most do not at this point I don't know what the law is in Germany about that so I mean as I say it's an international process they all have their own unique laws so I don't know my question has to do with the funding you said all these are paid is this a municipal position is the funding come from the city and if the council say has to approve a project like that wouldn't they be giving up some of their power and wouldn't that be an issue for them but essentially is where does the money coming from no I don't I typically like in Australia a process the council will fund it because it's an important decision that they that they want to offload to the citizenry maybe it's a hot button issue that they're going to get in trouble no matter which way they decide so they'd rather have the citizens decide directly so they don't get in trouble but other places it's been grant money that has been raised I know that there's some grant money that's been offered by the council I don't think it's enough to run the whole process but yeah all the things are being invented they're all different there's some that are funded by grants by foundations and some are funded by municipalities yeah nothing to add there it all always requires some degree of sharing power with residents absolutely and just to speak from healthy democracies processes around the gamut in terms of funding models sometimes the city pays for the whole thing in Eugene for example it was split three ways between the city private funding and a grant from a state agency so we can get creative democracy creative this is a long Amy's question how do you so something you mentioned was there were professional moderators and on-borders how do you manage the I'm sure the moderators and the process of onboarding must have an influence on the juries and how they operate and I'm curious how you if you try to mitigate that or how you handle that or how you try to make maybe the marriors impartial or something like that yeah it's a great question yeah so we always work with a team of the size of the panel you know six to eight small group moderators and we have a training for those moderators that really emphasizes staying out of the content entirely so we the healthy democracy team you know the conveners the all of the process staff try our best to literally not speak a word about the content that is entirely the role of panelists we are just there to hold space to make sure people are sharing airtime that folks who are quieter I love that quote about pulling out the shy ones you know have a chance to speak make sure everybody knows what their purpose is and that particular activity to move things along but we're not summarizing we're not kind of helping folks reach agreement we're not mirroring some of these standard facilitation techniques actually aren't as again it really depends on the practitioner organization but at least in our model you have the strip divide and we're not using some facilitation techniques that actually I think create more conditions for perception of bias among the moderating team and we really see this as a way of empowering the panel so it's not our business to be in the content at all or to think about how to summarize people's thoughts or you know suggest possible agreements if we create the right conditions the panel will do that themselves so that's kind of a long window to answer but really everything in the process is designed so that the process team is as credible as possible and as impartial to the content of the policy deliberation as possible Do you have any data on the efficacy of in-person versus virtual assemblies I'm just wondering if there is actually a factor there that would lead to either people producing a more compelling recommendation that policy makers are more likely to accept with something in person that would just be my guess or if you've tracked that either way Thanks. I know this research is being done I know there's a lot of professors around the world particularly in Europe who are studying exactly that issue when COVID came along and they had to invent a whole new way of doing deliberation and a lot of people have been studying it but I don't know the outcomes of the studies Yeah, I'd have to agree we've done a few virtual processes obviously in the last few years out of necessity so I can't speak and there are researchers still kind of producing their results on those so I can't speak to the empirical evidence on the differences but just from a subjective perspective it can be done online we've proven that it's possible and I think that's important but it's harder to balance airtime in a room it's harder for folks to feel comfortable really opening up with each other sharing constructive conflict with one another that's harder to do over Zoom especially if you're not used to Zoom so there are these kind of interpersonal qualities that I think in person is still a far superior forum but that isn't very empirical and I'd echo Terry and dig into some studies that prove or disprove that so my question is about the participatory nature of the Citizens' Assembly so I know that there are a lot of flaws with how we currently do things but in our current system there are opportunities for me to get involved in the political system I can vote in an election every year in Burlington or every other year in the state of Vermont in the United States or I can even participate in a political campaign I know that's not a lot and I would love there to be more opportunities for people ordinary people to get involved but with a government run by these Citizens' Assemblies they do wonder how people that might never be randomly selected to a Citizens' Assembly or people that have been but aren't anymore on it or soon to be not on it might have a way to participate in the political system if they do feel strongly about something if they're not on that so can you just talk about what other ways you can guarantee participation besides people that are on the assembly I'll tell you this is way down the road first off my long term project but first off my idea is that any citizen who wants to be involved they could just be involved they could just join voluntarily self select to be on a panel that is drafting proposals for any agenda item that's been called for that's my proposal but more importantly Maurice Pope who recently who died a few years ago but his son just published his book the keys to democracy on sortition and he did the calculation there are literally thousands of public policy decisions being made every week neighborhood, municipal, state county, federal level there's so many decisions being made if we did a jury process ultimately it would not cost more than having elected people doing these things but if we did a jury process he calculated that on average every citizen would be called for some sort of jury at least once a year it was his calculation now I don't know if that's true it depends on how much you divide up the issues like maybe is there an issue about whether to put a stop sign at this corner so you wouldn't go to that level of detail but maybe you'd have one that deals with zoning or whatever so it depends on how you design it and hopefully it would be designed through a sortition process of ordinary people looking at how it's working and then amending it over time and I'll just add to that in current practice often this process is very much additive so in every process we've done recently there's been kind of a parallel track of your more traditional avenues where folks can self-select to being engaged on that question and in addition to those traditional engagement avenues where folks are speaking directly to city staff or city council in the same way as we all currently have the opportunity to do also the panel at least in our last process and this is being used more around the world the panel can do its own public engagement so folks can opt in to like a world cafe style event for example or workshop in which the panel is collecting perspectives from the broader community and they can actually kind of act as a council would or city staff would as the conveners and the body that is collecting and interpreting that information as an input to its policy recommendations so yeah there are a couple different ways to design for that but certainly not replacing civic engagement in I think most cases currently all right I think we have time for one or two more questions so I know we have one here is that everybody okay so we'll get those last two we'll and then we gotta close it out do you have any examples of this going really horribly or what are some of your main challenges I can share one we did a a pilot citizens assembly on COVID recovery in Oregon a few years ago summer of 2020 and it was our first ever all online process and we received some grant funding to just kind of trial trial it online this was particularly interested in the online virtual you know whether deliberation could happen virtually element and so it was a pilot which means timing was way way way tighter than ever should then these processes should ever be and so frustrating for panelists I mean really no matter how much time there is even in the 90 hour process panelists always want more time that's just kind of human nature but but this one was really too constrained I think for folks to get really meaningful policy feedback in the way that deliberation is intended to make space for and since it was privately funded one of the challenges with that is that there wasn't a direct link to the panel's recommendations but it didn't originate from a government agency which meant that there was less buy in to really hearing and taking the panel's recommendations seriously so those are two lessons learned and you know I don't think I would recommend designing a process that didn't originate with a very specific pathway to policy influence from the outset and that didn't have at least enough time for a panelist to work through recommendations in their own words in a good deal of substance I'll just echo that the only negative ones I've heard about are ones that were for budgetary reasons were constrained, rushed didn't have enough time didn't have enough days designated that's ones that I've heard of that were the members themselves said this didn't work but that's very very rare one that I am concerned about is there was some talk about I think it was in Romania or Hungary where a government was going to do a sort of a fake Citizens Assembly where it sort of looked like a Citizens Assembly but it's like they were selecting the members and it sort of had the veneer of being this process but was not actually randomly selected so there's a danger of fake ones giving it a bad reputation so we're just going to do kit and then Romeo will give you the last word and then we'll close it out thank you so I'm actually going to make a comment I don't want to time me I don't want to spend more than a minute so there's a new concept out there in the world that's working for folks who are really convinced that our current system cannot solve problems major problems like COVID and the climate crisis and the new the new concept is being called 21st Century Socialism and it's just really really different from what we saw in the previous century and I want to say that this democratic, no random sortition and the community the Citizens Assembly's Residence Assembly's this whole thing is really really consistent with the goals and understanding of this new way of thinking if this system can't be reformed what can we create in its place so I just wanted to make a pitch for that now I was wondering that I understand that this is going to be something led by a non-profit organization I guess or would this because it's a publicly funded or taxpayer funded project that would have to work with the community development office here that way they can administer the assemblies to make sure that everything is in compliance I was wondering if that is the case and the second fold to this is is this going to be a competing interest alongside the existing council or would it be complimenting the existing council where policies that are you know decided or thought about can be shared with the council and then they can act on it thank you for the foreseeable future it's alongside I mean no one's going to say let's get rid of the council and replace it with Citizens Assembly's if they've never been seen if they've never even seen one if they work so for the foreseeable future it will be working with the councils okay well we're going to did you have the joint answer that Alex oh just just to very briefly answer the first question again it totally depends we're a non-profit delivery organization we tend to work closely with the city to implement the process you know cities often hire public engagement consultants so we're kind of playing that same role but we also happen to be a non-profit that's the way it happens in a lot of places in the world but in Paris like the case Terry mentioned I believe they're doing it mostly in-house just with a little bit of outside consultation in terms of the design so there certainly are a variety of ways to do that okay we are going to have one last one since it's Vermont's Lieutenant Governor ask a question we'll let him ask a quick thing although I don't think in this meeting having a title like that is necessarily a positive thing but this one works the gods have spoken with a dead battery my question has to do with sort of the energy right now in many places is sort of a conspiratorial skepticism of all governance in any way practically what is your method of randomly selecting people and how do you even make the list in the first place because voter checklist is limited census data street data we're talking about a phone book how does one do the selection process and how does one counter whatever narrative might come up of well it wasn't really random after all yeah so typically I mean it's pretty simple in most cities that have a GIS department they typically have data and all residential addresses and I don't think we've ever gotten that kind of conspiratorial pushback on that stage in the process it's certainly the reason why we do every other stage of the lottery selection process as transparently as possible in public we share every file we do everything on live stream and you know are open to questions about it so we have gotten pushback and we have honored some of those critiques and you know panel lot is an open source platform that was developed by some folks at Carnegie Mellon and Harvard I believe and folks can literally write the designers of the software if they want to take issue with how that process happens and we'll explain it as well so I hope that answers the question that's why we have all these stopgaps but well I think on that note we will call it an evening thank you so much Terry and Alex thank you all so much for having me from across the country good night everyone so there's been a lot of talking I'm just going to say we're going to hang out here for a little bit clean up the apple pie there's probably a little apple pie left and so if you want to talk more about this come talk to us or any of the other speakers what's that oh oh yes that's right and tomorrow night for thought club at democracy creative in the soda plant 6pm the conversation will be led by Phil and Farrs you heard from earlier alright thank you so much I appreciate all of you coming this was a big as Kevin mentioned this was like we didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into but really really happy to see so many people here and thank you again so much thank you