This from Dr. Jim Fishkin of Stanford’s Center for Deliberative Democracy:
Next weekend, Jan 9-10, a civic non-partisan organization, Power2010 will hold a national face to face Deliberative Poll in London. The agenda comes from thousands of online submissions to their web site about how to improve the political system. A national online sample, recruited by YouGov, representative in both attititudes and demographics will meet face to face in London to choose the highest priority reforms. Those top priorities will then be used in a national non-partisan campaign to get candidates in constituencies around the country to pledge their support. The project is unique in combining online submissions with face to face deliberations by a scientific sample (with a control group). It is also unique in taking a sample from virtual space, transporting it to London and having it deliberate face to face. Results should be available next week.
2 Comments
Pete,
Your name came up on my google alert re: Direct Democracy…and I’m glad you’ve added the Deliberative… California needs it…as you know Colorado and Oregon have better law. Also do you know about Senator Mike Gravel and the National Initiative for Democracy?… I’m Mike’s daughter and I too understand what Geoge Gallup, Sr said when reflecting on the wisom of The People vs. the vested interests of our Leaders…”on the most major issues we’ve dealt with in the past 50 years, the public was more likely to be right…based on the judgement of history…than the legislatures or Congress.”
Let me know if you’d like to connect with my dad, I’d be happy to arrange it.
Also there is an international direct democracy conference to be held in SF this summer … info is available at NewAmerica.org or let me know and I’ll get you the details.
Best,
Lynne Gravel Mosier
New America’s site is here (.net not .org): http://www.newamerica.net
Looks like the conference is August 1-4, 2010 in SF: http://www.iri-europe.org/fileadmin/user_upload/media/SF10-Flyer.pdf