Does British Columbia's Citizens Assembly Offer a Magic Key to Realizing Your Own Democratic Reform Agenda?

Elected officials have an intrinsic conflict of interest when considering reforms that might reduce their chances of re-election. One proposed solution to this dilemma is to take democratic reform out of the hands of elected officials and put it in the hands of a randomly selected body of citizens. The premier of British Columbia recently implemented such a reform. With the legislature's blessing, he created a "Citizens Assembly" of 160 randomly selected individuals ("The Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform"). The Assembly spent a year deliberating on a new electoral system and then placed its recommendation on the ballot for a province wide referendum on May 17, 2005. The referendum received 57.4.% of the popular vote and won in 77 of 79 political districts. The governments of Ontario and the Netherlands are now actively considering creating a similar type of assembly to make recommendations for democratic reform.

The purpose of this New America Foundation event is to develop a better understanding of what was original and effective in the British Columbia experiment and then brainstorm its potential significance for U.S. democratic reform. J.H. Snider, a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation, argues in the conclusion of his new book, Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick, that Congress should have a standing committee of randomly selected individuals with jurisdiction on matters where members of Congress have an intrinsic conflict of interest, including campaign finance, congressional ethics, legislation tracking, and redistricting.

But many less radical variations on the Citizens Assembly idea may be more feasible. For example, using a bottom-up strategy, California citizens could pass an initiative to set up a Citizens Assembly-like body to deliberate and propose a referendum on a fairer system of redistricting and elections. Alternatively, using a top-down strategy, California Governor Schwarzenegger, like British Columbia Premier Campbell, might be persuaded to support a Citizens Assembly-like body to fix California's corrupt electoral system, where not a single incumbent in the legislature lost in the 2004 elections. Clearly, there are lots of different ideas concerning how a Citizens Assembly-type body might move ahead a democratic reform agenda that otherwise wouldn't be in the self-interest of elected officials. Come join a discussion about how this radically new concept of democratic reform might be implemented in the U.S.

Participants

• J.H. Snider
  Senior Research Fellow


• Ken Carty
  Chief Research Officer, Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform


• Dennis Thompson
  Professor, Harvard University


• Rob Richie
  Executive Director, FairVote - The Center for Voting and Democracy


• Mark Schmitt
  Senior Fellow


• Steven Hill
  Irvine Senior Fellow, New America Foundation


• Dan Pellisier
  Chief of Staff, California Assemblyman Keith Richman