 Think tech away, civil engagement lives here. Okay, 4 p.m. Rock. What's the name of this show? Community Matters, yeah. Okay, we've got Colin Moore, he's the director of the Public Policy Center at UH Minoa. We've got Keith Mattson, he is a consultant for Accord 3.0, along with Peter Adler, and they do a lot of public policy. And you know, I just want to make a statement, may I, about public policy? Yeah, but it's your show too. These guys are involved in public policy, and we need them. We need them to be involved in public policy, to be thinking about it, to be leaders in thinking, thought leaders in public policy, because Hawaii needs that. There's always needed that, but it seems to me it needs it especially now. Don't you agree, huh? Absolutely in argument. And we need thoughtful feedback from the public to craft this public policy, and I think that's why we're here today, to talk about this Citizens' Jury Project we're working on. And I think it's really innovative. And I'll let Keith explain what it is. You know what they say, Kaskasekasah, jury initiative, public policy thing, yeah. Well, this has really been on my mind for a long time. We're in an era now, obviously, where there's more polarization in a lot of our politics. Not necessarily yet in Hawaii to the degree it is elsewhere, but we're at the same time in an era where people are shifting in who they trust. And you'll see that most of the major institutions that people used to trust, particularly for political news, are changing. And people are gravitating more towards whether social media or thought leaders that come out of certain little cable streams. And so there's a lot of confusion out there and a lot of, I guess, different interpretations about what's factual and what's not. When you have an election of any type, you know, that's when you really, really see this sort of phenomenon being tested or being threatening, you know, what could be, what should be a more objective way of choosing either elected officials or referendum or initiatives. So this process is designed to try to cut through some of that noise about what the media may be portraying or what thought leaders may be portraying about an issue and have a jury of your peers, your fellow citizens come together and study an issue in depth. And then they issue a statement, which is basically findings about what they found factual and reasons for both supporting or opposing the particular measure. Can I unpack some of that? Sure. Okay, what is the state of confusion? How do we get into this confusion? Will we always confuse or are these times, times in which the public is more confused? Well, I think the public doesn't know who to trust exactly. I mean, they feel like everyone has an agenda. And everyone is calling for their attention, but there are some people among those calling for their attention who are not telling them the truth. Right, and then some members of the public don't think anyone's telling them the truth at this point. And so this idea that we're working with has kind of been kicking around for a long time. I mean, the idea is what if average citizens could come together and take the time to really understand these public policy issues, because it's not that people are stupid, it's that for the most part they don't have the time to really investigate this stuff in depth. And so this dream that came from public policy professionals and political scientists was, what if we took a random selection of people like in a poll, but rather than subject them to the kind of marketing and lobbying they usually get, we let them actually learn about these issues and then report on what they learned. And so sometimes this goes by the term a deliberative poll, which is not what we're doing, but it's all kind of follows the same philosophies, which is we'll give average citizens a chance to learn the facts, to talk among themselves, to actually deliberate, which is not a word you hear very often. But you hear that in connection with juries, so that's a jury that's very well selected. Exactly, because people understand juries, they understand why they're important. It's the same idea, so this is a public policy jury. How do you avoid, you talked about noise, Keith, and surely, I've been reading a book lately, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, have you heard of that by an Israeli who writes in Hebrew, but it's translated into English, really interesting. He's a historian at a Hebrew university in Israel somewhere. And it's a best seller already, it's been on the market a week. And it's the guy's name is Yuval Noah Harari. And he's had three best sellers all in the same genre in the last. And one of his things is noise, and the need for clarity. And we all have to work on how to do clarity. And I think this is right along the same line, the jury hopefully will reach clarity. I certainly agree about the noise. Before seven o'clock in the morning I get 500 emails. I mean, what am I going to do? My head is exploding with this, and a lot of it is just noise, and I have to have clarity. But how does a jury get clarity? How do you, A, find people who are capable enough to seek that clarity and capable enough to integrate the information, the data, make sense out of it, and avoid the noise, and then come to some deliberative conclusion. That requires not just an ordinary person, but maybe a little extraordinary. How do you select them? Okay, well, there are a lot of questions of what you just asked. I can start with the last one. How do we select them? Basically, what we had to do, because this is a little bit more of a shoestring budget and short timeframe, is we relied on three networks of people. One were neighborhood board elected members, and we reached out to the neighborhood board chairs and asked them, can you recommend up to two people from your board who would be interested and willing to do this? We also supplemented that with the network of people in common cause and the League of Women Voters, likewise. So we got names, and I'll tell you a little bit more about how we've kind of worked with those names. But the key thing is these were already people. These are people who are civically engaged, interested in politics, and probably, especially for the neighborhood board people, used to working in groups on issues. And we just felt like that's a perfect sort of array of people to have for this exercise. In a pure exercise, you would actually start with voter rolls and go through a much more lengthy process to, you know, find... But you're still testing this methodology. We're still testing it. So the important thing is really, yeah, just seeing how this works and how does it resonate with the electorate? Yeah, well, let's talk about the crucible here. You know, you mentioned that you're going to give them carefully, carefully moderated information. You're going to keep the noise out. How do you do that in our world in the 21st century? It's hard to keep the noise out and they could get contaminated like the rest of us. How do you do that? That's right. I mean, it's not as if, you know, we were going to seal them in a room for three weeks to work on this. Right. Yeah. So we don't have that advantage that juries sometimes do. But I think that the hope is that, I mean, they will, you know, they'll have a chance to really talk through these issues in, you know, and give them more time than they would otherwise. And so I think the very participants will become better at filtering out the noise themselves. And this whole process is designed to help other voters filter out this noise. I mean, to say, here's a jury of my peers, you know, we're trying to agree on a set of facts, trying to frame the question. I mean, if you support, in this case, a constitutional convention, you know, here are some things it could accomplish. If you don't, you know, here are some reasons we've all agreed on, you know, that you might not want to support it. Here are some, you know, here are some potential outcomes. And I think, you know, I think the thing is like juries, a lot of these people really do rise to the occasion. I mean, they're investing a lot of time into this process as well. How much time? They're going to meet for three sessions or three evenings. They're each going to get a small stipend. And each meeting is going to be three, three and a half hours. Right. Get milk and cookies, I mean. They'll be dinner. Yeah. Dinner, okay. I mean, we'll provide food and just a small stipend to cover their, some of their out-of-pocket expenses. But big question. You say we are going to give them this and we are going to give them that. Good question. Is that you guys? Is that, is somebody going to moderate this discussion? Well, we're both organizing and facilitating it. So, yeah, we're the folks that they're going to see the most. We have some supporters, some funders in the background. But it's really just going to be us, the panelists, and invited speakers into the room. Invited speakers. Yeah. Now, this is how it's different. Right. This is how it's, the jury analogy is a little different because we want the people to, the panelists to listen to these speakers, but also to encourage them to ask them questions, unlike a jury. They don't get to do that. So, you know, at the end of the day, we want them to exhaust their curiosity about the con-con issue from several dimensions. So the test issue is a con-con issue. That's the only thing on the deck right now. Although, you know, truth is when you start talking about con-con, that conversation flowers and spreads into everything in our world. Right. Right. So how do you control? You got to moderate it. That's right. We're going to moderate it. We're going to focus on a few sets of policy issues that we think probably will come up. And then we'll also talk about the logistics of a con-con, how much it would cost, you know, how it would actually work because that's one of the big questions that's going to emerge out of this as well. I mean, the past people have said, well, we shouldn't have one because, well, first, we don't know what crazy things are going to come up with. But second, it's going to cost too much money. It'll take too much time. And so to get the people involved in this process to understand, you know, so how much money are we talking about? How much time are we talking about? Do we think this is a good investment for the state? So in the polarized world conference 90 days ago, both of you guys were involved in that to speak and to organize, as I remember. That was really important. But there were guidelines. There were rules. You had to control the situation. You had to keep it on track. So what rules apply to the jury in this case? We have several. I won't go into the details. But it's basically to have people engage civilly and respectfully and to acknowledge, you know, that this is an experiment, for example. And to use their best efforts to cooperate to produce this final statement at the end. I think maybe it should be clarified that the product of this, the thing that they will show the rest of the world is a one-page statement that has their agreed upon, generally agreed upon facts about the con con, the question. And then a list of pro-arguments for voting for it and a list of con for not voting for it. And we'll do a tally of those who support having a con con versus not having con con. But that's the least important of the three things I mentioned because this is not a predictive poll. Nobody should take any signal of how the electorate will vote just based on how this panel is. But they really should be focusing in on the facts that everybody agrees to in the pro and con statements. So are you going to take the last page off when you distribute this to the public? Oh, no, no. We'll report the results. Although actually, this was a question we talked about ourselves because there are processes like the one in Oregon where they don't ask that question. I mean, the purpose of this mainly... It's being done elsewhere then. Yes, it's being done elsewhere. And this is the inspiration. In Oregon, it actually appears on their sample ballot. Yeah, they get out. Oregon sends out a voter pamphlet at every household that has a registered voter. And this is included along with everything else. You mean the results of the jury? Yeah, yeah, right. The statement. Are distributed to the whole electorate? Yes. Wow. Along with... It's a booklet that has information about every single race. Did you worry that if the jury goes off the market they would have a skewing effect on the electorate? Well, I think they've run into some challenges with that in other states where they're worried that people are trying to undermine the people who are participants in this. And so you have to be very careful to make sure no one ends up in the sample who has a vested interest in pushing it one way or the other. It's getting a good sample. It's getting a good sample. It's having sponsors who are neutral parties in our case who haven't taken a previous position on the con con. Because that undermines the entire exercise. I mean, it's supposed to be... Now and later. Exactly. Exactly. But Oregon has had the most success with this, I think. They've used it the most, yeah. They pioneered it about a decade ago. And they've used it on, I think, at least about four or five different measures. So are you going to be able to get on the ballot? Are we going to... Are you going to be able to get on the ballot? Oh, not now. Not this too early. And it doesn't go on the ballot. It never goes on the ballot. I mean, with the ballot, yeah. It goes into some way that voters get information about the ballot. Okay. So that's what they do at Oregon. Anyway, right? You could... We're going to do it through the media. Massachusetts did it very similar to us. They did it for a measure involving decriminalizing marijuana. And they spread it out through the media. Arizona's used it for something involving actually Phoenix for their public pension system, whether it should be a defined benefit, defined contribution. Can we do this more than once? In other words, you have a con con issue. You're going to stop at one jury on this, or would you do it more than one time? Well, in this case, we're only going to have the time to do it. You don't have time to do it. But I mean, is there a benefit in doing it at more than one time? Not sure. I think the jury's out on that. Now, I've never heard that done. I heard that. I think it's basically because, you know, as I mentioned, the number one value of this are the facts and pro con statements. So it's not like taking multiple polls. That's not going to be helpful. It's not a poll, yeah. My guess is that different groups of people might land on roughly the same factual arguments and pros and cons, given the same information. Do you want to know their inclinations when you call them in? We ask them. We ask them if they lean Democrat or Republican. I mean, this isn't a perfect sample. It's not a random sample, which in an ideal world it would be. But we try it as much as possible to select people that, when our group comes together, they're roughly reflective of the population. Almost. We're almost there. You don't want to give their names, right? No. And that's a good question. We won't. The reason why is we want to create a very comfortable confidential setting for them to be able to do their work. Well, they won't be subject to who knows what. Right, right. And the plan is we don't want to list names until the whole thing is over. And we talked before about the deliberation and all that. I mean, you will facilitate. You will show them the way in terms of how to conduct the discussion and deliberations. But will you be there at the moment that they are writing this paper? Would you be there at the moment they are taking their decisions on this issue? Yeah, we will. We'll be basically running them through a way to get to that point because group writing is very difficult, as you know. Yeah. But yeah, we have to be there. We're not going to write it. We're not going to say here has to be this way, but we're going to lay out the format and kind of work them through. There's ways we're going to be able to get to this. If you look at any of these statements, they tend to be bullet form kinds of statements, not much kind of grandiose text. You don't record it or videotape or anything like that. No notes or anything. No notes. No observers. Just get the final product out. Yes. And then you distribute that in such a manner as you see fit. Exactly. Very interesting. Very interesting. So I have many other questions, but for now, my only interest, and I have an agenda on this, is we can take a one-minute break. That's my agenda. We'll be right back. Hey, Stan Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii. And they won't let me do political commentary. So I'm stuck doing energy stuff, but I really like energy stuff. So I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan Energyman at lunchtime, at noon on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place, just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan Energyman. Aloha. Aloha. Aloha. I am Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Cold Green for Think Tech Hawaii. I appear every other Monday at three, and I have really, really exciting guests on the exciting topic of energy efficiency. Hope to see you there. Okay. We're back with Colin Moore and Keith Mattson. And we're talking about really the finest example of doing public policy is getting people to talk about it. Because we have a problem in this state where people don't vote. They don't have animated conversations together. This is a way to bring humanity together to have the crucible, which I think is really important in any democracy. Okay. So how does it work? How do you see it working in the context of concon? What would you say to them? What will they say to you? Could you be phrased out a little bit unclear? How is this working? In the context of concon, it's happening. I mean, the news story, you guys issued a press release. Right. Is she doing this now? Right. This is happening right now. And this is the unique thing about all of these processes, is they're about real issues. I mean, they're about something that is on the ballot. It's not an academic exercise. And so they will be hearing from other voices. I mean, I don't think the, you know, the lobbying machine has really started with concon. But it's going to, it's gearing up right now. And they're going to hear from a lot of different positions. And this is to give them the space and then other voters, the opportunity to see what a average group of voters who have the chance to learn about the issue would, would think are the most important things for you who don't have that opportunity to think about. And that's what makes this so unique. But it also is about a real issue that's happening. And the hope is that this cuts through a lot of the advocacy and gets to the heart of the issues and offers people as close, I think, as you can get to a neutral, unbiased view when you bring together a bunch of citizens, people who don't normally have the chance to talk to each other. That's the other thing that's unique about this. They don't know each other. We're bringing, oh, no. We're bringing 18-year-old progressives in with, you know, 70-year-old Republicans, people from all over, in this case, just the Wahoo. Interesting. They never have a chance to talk about these issues. Can I be a fly on a wall? Watch it. See the engagement, yeah. I was trying to think of an analogy to this. And my only one that can come up with this, this is sort of a consumer reports version of a way of weighing in on an issue. So, you know, if you're shopping for a fridge and, you know, you can look at what Best Buy has listed and, you know, who's saying what about that. Or you can go to some other, you can go to the manufacturer. You can go to any number, right? But, you know, if you really want a sort of unbiased viewpoint, you may go to consumer reports. That's a little dated, I guess, these days. Because, you know, they've got a methodology and you know they're not making money off of what you buy. It's yelp for public policy. Yeah. No way it's brother-in-law. So, we open it up and we say, resolve the question is whether we should vote, whether you will and we should vote for the con con. You'll be on the ballot. So, it's simply phrased question. Do you want a con con or not? Right? Exactly. Okay. So, I guess the opening question would be, so what do you guys think? Or maybe it's not. Maybe it's, I'm going to give you some evidence. I'm going to give you some speakers and I guess I'm going to answer your question. Give me factual questions. I'm going to give you some reading material. Maybe, I don't know. Yeah. That I think is probative here. Is that what's going to happen? Exactly. Exactly. Like I said, we want them to exhaust their curiosity about the topic. They can ask you questions. Well, they can ask us questions. Can you help me find out this, that and the other thing? But, you know, the better thing is to ask the invited speakers, you know, many who have already taken positions pro or con against. And who are presumably expert or at least focused in the questions. Exactly. Exactly. Right. But the process itself, I mean, it's not a debate. So, yeah, that resolved framing kind of makes sense, but I think the hope is that there really will be some real deliberation. It's not as if, you know, one side is going to try to, you know, hammer the other, you know, minority of the group. But that does exist, doesn't it? It does. It does. And that's why... There are people who are strident and, you know, well, they become strident. And the hope is that, first, that doesn't happen when you bring together a cross-section of citizens who don't have or aren't professional advocates, don't have preconceived ideas about how this would work out. So, it is, I mean, in that way it's like a jury, but unlike a jury, you know, we don't have counselors who are trying to, you know, push one version of the facts or the other. They'll hear from different sides, but they'll also just be sort of factual statements. And the important part is not them coming to a final verdict. It's, you know, trying to frame the issue. Frame the issue and the considerations. The factors that go into the voting decision. And it strikes me there's an awful lot of factors, things you worry about, problems you worry about, about lack of solutions or, you know, solutions that may be possible. It's the process of how a con con works. You said you want to teach them all of that. But I think the most interesting thing to me is that people are complacent about this. They don't really know how the government works. You need to have this crucible availability and we need to see how it works. And there are considerations that would come up. And I'm sure you're very interested in seeing what those considerations are, what drives people on an issue like this. For example, you know, I see a lack of confidence in the system of the con con. People are afraid because they don't know what it's going to do and it may turn around and bite them. And you want to know why they think it would bite them. But I think to me, if I was there, I would say I don't have that much confidence that a con con will do the right thing. And that's because the citizens of the state who would run for that con con and participate in it, they may not really know the issues, as well as we do. You know, we should all run for con con. But you raised a good point. And I think one of the things we're going to really spend a good amount of time on is understanding the 1978 con con. And I know you've had speakers on your show talk about that, but a lot was done. Whether or not everybody agrees with it is a different matter. But a lot was done. A lot of changes were made. And so people should be aware, number one, you can anticipate that that same kind of range and more of things could be floated. The other real key difference, though, is 1978-2018 are worlds apart in terms of the role of large money and outside interests that would possibly... You mean that in a positive way or a negative way? Both ways, again. It depends on what side of the fence you're looking at on what issue. But that is the difference. And they should observe the fact that if a con con were to emerge, then you may see quite a lot of outside interests, quite a lot of outside money. It depends on how it would be regulated. And the voting for delegates? It could be in that. It could be in the lobbying. In lobbying the delegates. That's really chilling. Here's a perfect thing. Correct me if I'm wrong. To my knowledge, the Sunshine Law was really an outcome of the 78 con con. I think that's true. So that means that the actual con con was not subject to the Sunshine Law. Didn't exist. So what happens now? I mean, it's a very interesting question because that could affect the entire flavor. Obviously, information technology was nothing like it is now. So, you know, the whole blogosphere and texting and whatnot did not occur, but now it does. And it's wide open. I mean, there's no real set of rules for how, if it happens, the Constitutional Convention would work. I mean, the legislature sets those. And so they can, you know, there's some guidelines from what's happened in the past. But, you know, we hope that this process in some ways will at least give people, you know, some sort of purchase point. Like these, this is how this would happen. Or, you know, these are the things to be concerned about. And some of this is, you know, really just a lot of, you know, a lot of noise. So that's, I think that's our goal. One of the very interesting things is to see what happens because it's not only for their benefit. It's for our benefit. We want to see what happens when you put, you know, civic minded citizens in a crucible and see what pops out. I would be fascinated to read that report and to discuss it. And I hope when it's done, you guys will come back. And you can see how it went, what they, if you can talk about it, what they said in the crucible and what they wrote down and how all of that integrates as a matter of political science and civics and everything. I got one last question when I asked you guys. It's such an overarching thing. There was an article in the MIT Tech Review two weeks ago that really struck me. And it said, you know, we have such problems with voting in this world today. Nobody really has confidence in the voting process. They don't vote. And if you ask them why, they say they don't have confidence, you know. On the other hand, Xi Jinping, he's got data on everybody. And he knows where you come and go, what you eat, what you read. Everything. He knows everything about you. And he knows your political propensities too. So when he wants to know what 1.5, I think it's 1.5. It's not 1.3 anymore. 1.5 billion people want to do, want to give an initiative. He just queries the database. And he gets a pretty good answer on what they would say or what they would not like, you know, on the flip side. Is that where this is going? Or is this, I guess you guys have confidence in the jury system. You have confidence in the crucible. And you'd rather do it that way. Well, and this is the exact opposite. I mean, what you're describing is not democracy because what this adds is this deliberative process which has always been a core part of democracy. The freedom for people to change their minds when they hear different ideas, when they engage with fellow citizens. I mean, we don't do a whole lot of that anymore. But you can't do that, you know, just by using a Facebook algorithm and trying to find out people's preferences. The hope is that preferences will change. And actually, we are going to ask people how they feel about the con con before we do any of this work. And so it will be interesting to see if some people change their minds about some of these issues. One thing about democracy is it has to change with the times. And, you know, I guess the question, if I was on that panel, the question to me is two things. One is, has the existing system changed with the times? And I think you can make a good case for no, it hasn't. And then the other question as well, whatever the circumstances that brought us here today are, are we ready to have this conversation? Are we ready to intelligently vote on such an issue knowing the Pandora's box problem? So close. Give me your final thoughts. You want to tell people about the program. I think the important thing is that this is, you know, a very interesting experiment, if you will. But it's a very purposeful one. Because, you know, we have a situation that we discussed when we started this interview of polarization, not trusting certain traditional sources, and just not voting it very much. And so if this can be at least one way of cutting through that and making our electoral system just a little bit stronger, a little bit more responsive, then it will have succeeded. People want a source they can trust. And if you can't trust your fellow citizens, then, you know, I don't know who you can trust. So this gives them an opportunity to learn about the issues but then to present their own unbiased results after talking to each other. We need to re-engage, don't we? We have to recognize that the government is us and we are the government. And anything we can do in that direction is positive. So thank you very much, gentlemen, for doing this. Thank you. Thanks for having us.