New America Foundation

Citizens’ Assemblies to propose democratic reforms appear to be on a roll.  Last year British Columbia held the first Citizens’ Assembly, with its recommendation voted on by a provincial referendum this past May.  Inspired by that precedent, Ontario, Canada appears to be moving ahead with a Citizens’ Assembly, and serious proposals in the Netherlands and the state of California have also recently appeared.  A Nexis search on “British Columbia and Citizens’ Assembly” will find hundreds of articles in the Canadian press.  But, amazingly, there has been almost no coverage of this important innovation in the mainstream U.S. press.

The key inspiration behind the Citizens’ Assembly concept is that elected officials have an inherent conflict of interest when considering democratic reforms designed to make themselves more accountable to voters.  By delegating that type of reform to another body that has democratic legitimacy but no conflict of interest, this defect in our current democratic system of governance can be rectified.

Here’s a brief history of British Columbia’s Citizens’ Assembly.  In 1996, the Liberal party of British Columbia won more votes than the second place New Democratic party. But thanks to the first-past-the-post electoral system, the New Democrats won control of the government. In 2001, the head of the Liberal party, Gordon Campbell, promised that if the Liberal party won the 2001 elections, it would create a citizens’ assembly on electoral reform to recommend ways of improving the existing electoral system. The Liberals won the election with an overwhelming majority—57.6% of the popular vote and 77 of the 79 electoral districts in British Columbia. Newly elected Premier Gordon Campbell then went about fulfilling his promise to the electorate.

On April 30, 2003 the legislature passed a motion to create the Citizens’ Assembly. The premier then proposed and the legislature ratified the chair of the Assembly. In the following months, 160 individuals were randomly selected in a multi-stage stratified sample to serve as the Assembly’s members.

The Citizens’ Assembly deliberated in three stages. The first, from January through March 2004, was called the learning stage. Assembly members met over six weekends to learn about various electoral systems. The second, from May through June, was called the hearings stage. Subsets of assembly members participated in 50 hearings throughout the province to gather public comments. The last stage, from September through November, was called the deliberation stage. Assembly members met over five weekends and deliberated on the strengths and weaknesses of various proposals before selecting an electoral system based on the single transferable vote. This recommendation was then placed on the ballot for a referendum to take place on May 17, 2005. To pass, the ballot item needed 60% of the vote and 48 of the 79 electoral districts. Regular ballot items only needed 50% to pass but the legislature wanted a supermajority for this item because it involved fundamentally changing British Columbia’s system of democracy. The ballot item read: “Should British Columbia change to the BC-STV electoral system as recommended by the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform?”

The May referendum received 57.4% of the vote. Since it didn’t reach the 60% threshold, it did not pass. Whether one considers this vote an affirmation of the Citizens’ Assembly process depends a lot on one’s perspective. In itself, the majority vote is remarkable. But given research showing that when voters are confused by a ballot item they vote the status quo, I interpret the vote count as an underestimate of latent support for the Citizens’ Assembly concept. About half the electorate had not heard of the referendum by election day and were thus predisposed to oppose it when they saw it for the first time in the voting booth.   The Citizens’ Assembly referendum has now been scheduled for a second vote in November 2008.

The most exciting development with the Citizens’ Assembly concept in the U.S. is taking place in California, where two senior legislators, both moderates, one a Republican and one a Democrat, are considering sponsoring an initiative to create a Citizens’ Assembly to deal with a range of democratic reforms, including redistricting.  Stay tuned….

J.H. Snider, Ph.D.