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Fostering a Culture of Problem Solving in Washington

Joe Goldman
/
August 14, 2013

“Compromise” is a dirty word in today’s political environment. To admit to making a compromising implies weakness and a lack of principle. In their new book, “The Spirit of Compromise,” Amy Gutman and Dennis Thompson recall a 2010 interview of Speaker John Boehner on CBS’s 60 Minutes:

JOHN BOENER: We have to govern. That’s what we were elected to do.

LESLIE STAHL: But governing means compromising.

BOEHNER: It means working together.

STAHL: It also means compromising. …

BOEHNER: When you say the word “compromise” … a lot of Americans look up and go, “Uh-oh, they’re going to sell me out…”

STAHL: Why won’t you say – you’re afraid of the word.

BOEHNER: I reject the word.

By design, our political system does not function without compromise. While partisans on both sides may hold out for the day in which they control super majorities who can make decisions at will, the reality is that these circumstances are rare and temporary. Failure to accept the need for compromise privileges the status quo and robs our political system of the capacity to solve problems. Compromise need not entail a violation of core values, but it does often require giving up some battles and letting the other side win something. To political leaders who are stuck in a permanent campaign, the idea of losing anything is unacceptable, which takes any compromise off the table. Gutmann and Thompson write that improving mutual respect and trust among political leaders can help shift this mindset and make compromise possible. They write:

“Because in politics motives are usually suspect and bargaining leverage often uncertain, capitulating to opponents is an ever-present fear. Mutual respect is an indispensable antidote. Without it, the parties to a compromise have little reason to believe that they are getting as much as they can reasonably expect, and they cannot assure their supporters that they are not selling out. Political leaders who combine being principled partisans with cultivating close relationships with their partisan opponents bring both the intrinsic and the instrumental values of mutual respect to the table when the time for compromise is ripe.”

Mutual respect cannot solve everything that is plaguing our politics – it may only be a small part of the solution. Real political incentives – votes, money, promotions – often stand in the way and can overpower any good will that exists between people. But some modicum of trust and respect is often a pre-condition to solving problems and can make a real difference. With this in mind, I’m happy to share that the Democracy Fund has added a new member of our portfolio aimed at encouraging bipartisan problem solving – the No Labels Foundation. As you may know, the No Labels Foundation is the educational arm of No Labels – a group of Democrats, Republicans, and independents dedicated to a new politics of problem solving in America. They join the Bipartisan Policy Center, the National Institute for Civil Discourse, and the Faith & Politics Institute in our portfolio of organizations working to ensure that our government has the capacity to rise to the challenges facing our nation. Over the past year, 82 Members of Congress have joined a Problem Solvers Coalition organized by No Labels to encourage greater communication and collaboration among political leaders from both parties. The No Labels Foundation has organized educational events in order to foster greater trust among these political leaders, their staff members, and other key stakeholders in Washington. By building relationships across the aisle within the policy making community, the No Labels Foundation believes it can foster an environment of trust among policy makers and their staff members. Their approach to building personal relationships between political leaders from opposing parties and focusing attention on common interests is well aligned with our aim at the Democracy Fund. I’ve personally attended several events convened by the organization to foster dialogue among policy makers. What has stood out more than anything else is how rare these opportunities seem to be where leader can get to know colleagues from the other side and identify space for genuine common ground. My sense is that there is a real hunger for these opportunities, especially among newer members. The Democracy Fund will continue to explore how structural changes – like redistricting reform and changes to Congressional procedures – can further shift incentives in our political system. But we are enthusiastic about the work that grantees like the No Labels Foundation are doing to contribute to a more productive governance process.

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Guest Post: Engaging News Project Results

Talia Stroud
/
September 18, 2013

It has been an exciting debut year for the Engaging News Project. The aim of the project is to research democratically-beneficial and commercially-viable tools and strategies for engaging online news audiences. Below, we detail four take-aways from our work. Use a “Respect” Button in Comment Sections. “Like” is a common button on news websites. You can “like” news organizations, articles, and others’ thoughts in comment sections. The use of the word “like,” however, may exacerbate partisan reactions to news and comments. The word asks people to think in terms of agreeing or disagreeing, approving or disapproving. But not all words inspire the same reaction. Indeed, several organizations have incorporated other buttons onto their sites. The Tampa Bay Times has “Important,” Civic Commons “Informative,” and Huffington Post “Bored,” to name but a few. We tested a new word: “Respect.” Perhaps asking people to “Respect” others’ comments will lead to different behaviors in a comment section compared to “Like,” or another frequently used word, “Recommend.” The results were encouraging. From a democratic angle, “Respect” led people to click on more comments expressing different political viewpoints. From a business angle, “Respect” resulted in more clicks overall, particularly for some topics. We encourage news organizations to consider using this new button. Use Fact-Based Interactive Slider Quizzes. Online polls are regular features on news sites. They solicit site visitors’ opinions on everything from proposed legislation to how a sports team will fare during an upcoming season. Truth be told, however, the poll results are of limited value. They offer no insight on the sentiments of a broader public. They should not be used to form an opinion or to inform policy. The main purpose of these features is to keep people on a news page longer. We hoped that we could find a way to increase the democratic value of these interactive tools. Instead of polls that ask people to report their opinions, we tested quizzes that ask people about a fact and then provide reliable information. For example, a question could be posed about what percentage of the federal budget is spent on Social Security. Quiz questions also could ask people to predict public opinion about a topic, giving results based on reliably-gathered public opinion data. We tested two types of polls: a multiple-choice poll and a slider poll. Consider the Democracy Fund’s work with the “Oregon Citizens Initiative Review (CIR).” As Peter Levine explained in his earlier blog post, the project involves sending Oregonians pamphlets created by a representative group of 24 citizens that explain ballot measures. Here are examples of the two types of polls:

We first conducted a laboratory test on polls like these. We learned that people spend more time with slider polls and that these interactive tools improve learning compared to just telling people a fact (e.g. “nearly half of Oregon voters were aware of the CIR’s explanations.”). Next, we partnered with a news organization that let us include polls on their site. The code randomized whether people saw a multiple-choice or slider poll. Results showed that including more than one poll, and at least one slider poll, can increase the amount of time people spend on a webpage. Get Involved in the Comment Section. In visiting with news staff across the country as part of this project, we were struck by the tremendous variability in comment section practices. Some news organizations actively cultivate a vibrant online community. Others essentially ignore the section, writing it off as a wasteland that is included on a site because having people argue, the theory goes, could increase their time on site. Calls by political leaders from President Obama to Texas Governor Perry to improve the civility of public discourse inspired us to examine strategies for combatting incivility in comment sections. We worked with a local television station to randomize what took place following 70 different political posts to their active Facebook page. For some posts, the station’s popular political reporter interacted with commenters. For other posts, the station interacted with commenters. And for yet other posts, no one interacted with commenters. Results showed that having a political reporter interact with commenters can improve civility in the comment section. Use Caution in Labeling Hyperlinks. Our final project analyzed how hyperlinks are labeled on news sites. Right now, they are commonly labeled as “Top Stories” or as “Most Popular Stories.” We wondered whether other phrases, developed based on research in psychology, communication, and political science, could affect people’s on-site behavior. For example, we analyzed whether including the phrase “Follow the issues that worry you.” would influence people’s on-site behavior and attitudes about politics. We conducted a lab experiment where we compared how people behaved on a news site that was identical in all ways except one: a single phrase included on the site. Results were decidedly mixed. All of the six different phrases that we evaluated had effects, but none of them had uniformly positive business and democratic outcomes. For example, the phrase “Follow the issues that worry you” resulted in some respondents displaying less polarized political views, but it had no discernible business effect. As a result of our study, we can’t recommend any of the phrases that we tested. But we can report with confidence that news organization should tread cautiously in adding new phrases to their sites. A single phrase can affect people’s attitudes and behaviors. For the Engaging News Project these results are the beginning of the project’s work to help newsrooms. Many new tools and strategies remain to be discovered and evaluated and we look forward to continuing our work in the coming years. If you’re interested in getting involved, you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, Sign up for our newsletter, and Email us with any suggestions you might have!

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Guest Post: The State Open Campaign System: Technology for Cleaner, Fairer Campaigns

John Kaehny
/
October 25, 2013

New York has struggled to emerge from a long history of political scandals. In recent years, a number of the state’s most powerful elected officials have left office after indictments or convictions, as have numerous state legislators. The public’s unhappiness over the pervasive influence of money in state politics has led to a loud call for new legislation that would reform campaign finance and ethics laws. But the state legislature has resisted. Despite this inaction in Albany, we are optimistic that there are ways forward that do not require difficult legislation or political upheaval. For instance, New York — and other states — can use inexpensive technology to help make our campaign finance system cleaner, fairer and more transparent.

Our informal group of civic-minded technologists and transparency and campaign experts has created a blueprint for an affordable, state-of-the-art campaign finance reporting system called the State Open Campaign System. It’s like a super-charged TurboTax for campaign finance: a website based tool that would be made available by the Board of Election — for free — to every state political campaign to use for bookkeeping, reporting and donor tracking. All online, no paper. Our design builds on the New York City Campaign Finance Board’s web based CSMART, which moved all New York City campaign reporting online this year. Our team assembled earlier this year in the midst of a big push for a small donor matching program like New York City’s 6-1 public match, and lower caps on contributions. Experts on campaign finance agree that any public funded campaign matching program must be accompanied by rigorous reporting, oversight, and tough enforcement. They also agree that transparency and tough reporting are an integral part of any kind of clean campaign finance system.

We designed the State Open Campaign System — “SOCS” — after in-depth discussions with government regulators, campaign treasurers, experts from academia and watchdog groups, and major technology firms.* We had three goals for the web based system. First, we wanted to design a system that allows campaigns to comply with very tough reporting and auditing regimes as easily as possible. Second, we wanted to sharply reduce the cost to regulators of conducting audits and detecting abuse. Third, we sought to use modern data sharing techniques, like API’s, to open up campaign finance data to the public, and to watchdogs in and out of government, and to make it as useful as possible. SOCS incorporates best practices for campaign finance and ethics reporting: 1. A fully paperless system which uses a website for all records and transactions. 2. Smart web-forms, with automatic suggestions/corrections, producing fewer errors. 3. Instant address and donor ID validation procedures that use voter and data files. 4. Unique ID numbers for all donors. 5. Open data using widely available API’s and bulk downloads in open file formats.

To make SOCS as useful as possible, we went through every step of reporting and auditing campaign donations and expenditures. We designed a “work flow” that uses smart forms, and widely available business software, to help campaigns comply with complicated rules, in a way that is as simple and intuitive as possible. We strove to keep our system as inexpensive as possible by using modules of open source code. We estimate that completely implementing SOCS, and buying new database hardware and software would cost New York about eighteen cents a voter, or two million dollars. Since New York’s totally archaic campaign finance technology is on the verge of collapse, and has to be replaced in any event, the additional cost of building a system like SOCS is very low.

Our hope is that New York will build the State Open Campaign System as part of replacing its aged technology and reforming its campaign system. If it does, we would like to see SOCS offered as an open source tool for other states. We have a promising discussion underway with the NYC Campaign Finance Board about open sourcing its CSMART code sometime in early 2014, and we will continue to work with the Democracy Fund and our many other partners to get the Open Campaign System up and running. Please feel free to contact us at info@campaignworkinggroup.org John Kaehny is executive director of Reinvent Albany, and a co-founder of the Open Campaign Working Group.

 

*Summaries of some of these interviews are online at opencampaignsystem.org

 

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Guest Post:New Report Evaluates the Use of Google Hangouts and Other Formats for Public Deliberation

Peter Levine
/
November 25, 2013

(This is the seventh in a series of blog posts by CIRCLE, which evaluated several initiatives funded by the Democracy Fund to inform and engage voters during the 2012 election. These posts discuss issues of general interest that emerged from specific evaluations.)

During the 2012 campaign season, AmericaSpeaks and Face the Facts USA worked together to involve citizens in online discussions of important issues facing our country. An evaluation by John Gastil, David Brinker, and Robert Richards of Penn State’s Department of Communication Arts and Sciences finds that people learned a lot about the issue from videos or text explanations. Participants absorbed somewhat less factual information from deliberations but gained more commitment to civil dialogue. When they chose to share what they had learned or experienced, they opted to put comments on websites to share more complex thoughts but used Facebook and Twitter to disseminate simpler points. Conservatives were less satisfied with these particular deliberations.

A participant from one of the Google Hangout discussions who was interviewed by the evaluators reflected on his experience with the dialogue:

“I was really surprised by this experience. I didn’t … expect to get much (or anything) from it. But I actually enjoyed it a lot, and I think it was useful. And I think this sort of experience, with a skilled moderator, could actually be incredibly beneficial for our democracy. There are so many forces acting to the detriment of American democracy, and I can’t really think of ANY forces helping preserve the quality of our democracy. …. I think there’s a lot of potential here, to counteract the pernicious effects of cable news and special interest campaign financing.”

The evaluators also organized face-to-face deliberations for college students on the same issue (the national debt/economy) and randomly varied the style of facilitation. Some facilitators were trained to “focus on rigorous analysis of the facts,” others on “democratic social relationships among the participants,” and a third group was asked to balance the two styles. Preliminary evidence suggests that all three styles were generally successful, but a balanced approach was best for raising the participants’ knowledge of the issue, which, in turn, led them to value the conversation more. Facilitators should focus on keeping a conversation on topic and identifying tradeoffs.

These and other findings are summarized in a report by Gastil, Brinker, and Richards. (The methodology is described below)

All in all, we hope these results prove useful to others who wish to take deliberation to scale using online approaches and face to face discussions and look forward to sharing them widely. Please do be in touch if you are aware of other work in this area and want to share.

 

————————————
Methodology

The research team recruited an online sample of adults and randomly assigned them to:

  • discuss issues in small groups using Google Hangout’s web-chat function. These discussions were structured and facilitated.
  • listen to a live broadcast video about a policy issue; thanks to Spreecast’s technology, they could submit questions to the moderator and chat online with other participants.
  • read text or watch videos that explained policy issues, or
  • receive no information about the issues at all but just take a survey.

The evaluators compared the participants’ grasp of the issue and attitudes about citizenship and discussion. They also recruited college students for face-to-face discussions and randomly varied the facilitation style. The evaluation was funded by the Democracy Fund through a subcontract to CIRCLE at Tufts University.

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Guest Post: Journalism educators — Have you a project that will energize your local media ecosystem?

Jane McDonnell
/
December 2, 2013

Today ONA launched the application process for a contest for journalism educators to experiment with new ways of providing news and information

We know that you and your fellow j-school colleagues have been talking about experiments that innovative experiment that will shake up your curriculum. There’s a talented student who just needs the right mix of collaboration and inspiration to fulfill her promise. You have a local media partner willing to work with you and a cool engagement platform in mind. Researcher: Check. Designer? Could be. Developer? In the wings.

You’ve got the right ingredients to apply for the 2014 Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education, and inject up to $35,000 in the form of a micro-grant that can push your idea to launch and—we hope—make both your curriculum and your local news landscape stronger. The competition, run by ONA and funded not only by a collaborative that includes Excellence and Ethics in Journalism Foundation, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as well as the Democracy Fund, will support live news experiments that further the development of teaching hospital models in journalism education, in which innovative projects are created by teams of educators, students, professionals, technicians, and researchers.

Micro-grants will be awarded to 15 to 25 projects to be completed during the 2014-2015 academic year. Irving Washington, ONA’s Director of Operations and Challenge Fund administrator, in advising applicants suggests “Your project should stretch the limits of what you think you can do. Don’t be afraid to fail. The goal is to empower journalism schools to lead professional innovation and thought leadership. The size of your school or program shouldn’t limit the project’s ambition.”

Teams will be selected based on ideas that show the most potential for:

  • encouraging collaborative, student-produced local news coverage
  • bridging the professor-professional gap
  • using innovative techniques and technologies
  • and producing shared learnings from their digital-age news experiments

The competition will culminate in at least one substantial grand prize for the project most likely to change either local newsgathering, journalism education or both. An overall prize will be given for the best project evaluation, regardless of the experiment’s outcome. The winners and their projects, chosen in consultation with academic advisers and ONA leaders, will be featured at upcoming ONA conferences and other news media education events.

For inspiration, FAQs and resources, visit journalists.org and follow the conversation on #hackcurriculum.

Have questions? Email challengefund@journalists.org.

Deadline is Feb. 13, 2014 and winners will be announced in April, 2014.

Good luck—we can’t wait to see what you come with up.

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Guest Post: The Role of Ranked Choice Voting in 2013

Rob Richie
/
December 19, 2013

(This post was co-authored by Drew Spencer, Staff Attorney for FairVote)

If you followed the local elections that took place in 2013, you probably heard stories about ranked choice voting. There were excellent new examples of how it works in practice and a wave of positive national press, including a Governing magazine news story on the impact of ranked choice voting on civility in elections and a Governing commentary by former Oregon Secretary of State Phil Kesling explaining its value for electing winner with higher voter turnout.

The most prominent stories came from Minneapolis, Minnesota, where voters had an unusually wide breadth of election choices for the open mayor’s seat. Current law requires candidates to pay a filing fee of only $20, which led to 35 candidates appearing on the ballot. Had voters been restricted to voting by indicating only a single favorite candidate in a single round of voting, Minneapolis’s mayor almost certainly would have won with a low plurality of the vote. In this year’s mayoral race in Boston, for example, the first place finisher in the preliminary election received only 18% of the vote. While a November runoff election did produce a majority winner, it came at the price of knocking out all candidates of color before the higher turnout general election.

Instead of a choose-only-one election system, however, Minneapolis uses ranked choice voting. Voters were able to express not only which candidate was their favorite, but also which second-choice and third-choice candidates they preferred over the remaining candidates. Those rankings were used to conduct a series of instant runoff elections, with the last-place finisher eliminated and their ballots added to the totals of the candidate ranked next until two candidates remained.

Ranked choice voting led to Minneapolis’ mayoral candidates competing seriously but also positively. Voters ultimately elected Betsy Hodges, a candidate who earned broad consensus support. Heavily outspent, Hodges skipped spending money on television ads in favor of grassroots campaigning. She broke from the field by earning more than a third of first-choice rankings and was the first, second or third choice of more than 60% of the voters—and was a landslide winner in the final instant runoff with her better financed rival.

Minneapolis voters overwhelmingly understood and preferred ranked choice voting, according to an exit poll by Edison Research and analysis of the election by FairVote Minnesota. Minneapolis school board member Kim Ellison was among many expressing excitement and pride in the outcome even when their first-choice candidate did not win. In Minneapolis, commentators noted that the political climate had changed from traditional “machine politics” to coalition politics, in which candidates talk to voters more about issues and policy. A local professor called the 2013 mayoral election a “game changer.” In video interviews, voters shed light on how positively ranked choice voting was viewed.

Among those elected to the city council’s 13 seats by ranked choice voting are the city council’s first Latino, Somali and Hmong Cambodian members. Ranked choice voting was also used for eight additional offices, including five seats elected by the fair representation, multi-seat form of ranked choice voting.

Similarly encouraging stories have come out of the other cities using ranked choice voting this year. In St. Paul (MN), incumbent mayor Chris Coleman easily defeated three challengers, with ranked choice voting allowing that election to take place in one round instead of two. As highly competitive special election led to the election of the first Hmong American to its city council. Instructively, two Hmong Americans were able to run without concern of splitting the vote—and the campaign was civil enough that the winner ultimately hired an African American candidate who finished a close second to work on his council staff.

FairVote’s Andrew Douglas wrote of the positive effects that the fair representation multi-seat ranked choice voting method had in this year’s city elections in Cambridge, Massachusetts for nine city council seats and six school committee seats. The Cambridge election resulted in four first-time winners including the council’s first Latino member and a 29-year-old Arab American. Despite comprising less than 20% of the city’s population, African American candidates have had continuous representation on the council since the 1950’s, and won two of six school committee seats. More than 95% of voters typically rank at least one winning candidate as one of their top three choices and like-minded voters can elect a candidate with 10% of the vote.

Takoma Park (MD),- where FairVote is headquartered, also elected its city offices with ranked choice voting, but races were lopsided. The bigger story was it becoming the first city in the nation to extend voting rights to residents after they turn 16, a practice already done in national elections in several countries, including Austria, and Brazil. Turnout of eligible voters who were 16 and 17 was nearly twice as high as the the turnout rate of residents 18 and older.

This fall there were two special elections for U.S. Congress in which ranked choice voting played a role. Louisiana held a special election to fill a vacancy in its fifth congressional district on November 16th. In Louisiana state and federal elections, all candidates run against each other in the first round; If no candidate earns a majority, there is a runoff election between the top two candidates a few weeks later – with this year’s runoff between two Republicans. However, the time between rounds of voting is too short for many military and overseas voters to be able to receive and return their runoff ballots. To allow those voters to fully participate, Louisiana instead allows them to complete a ranked choice ballot before the first round takes place. That way, their ballots can count in the runoff for whichever of their highest ranked candidates remains.

Alabama also held a special election for Congress this fall with ranked choice ballots for overseas and military voters. There, the partisan primary elections include a runoff election if no candidate receives a majority of votes. With a crowded field of competitors for the Republican nomination, a runoff election was expected – and again overseas voters would not have enough time to receive and return new ballots for the primary runoff. Because federal law requires that such voters not be disenfranchised, a federal court ordered that Alabama allow them to use a ranked choice ballot when voting in the Republican primary – a remedy Alabama itself proposed as a means to allow it to keep a tight schedule for its multiple rounds of elections.

FairVote has written about the use of ranked choice voting for overseas and military voters before. It’s a simple reform that helps make runoff elections work better while respecting the votes of absentee voters, and it’s very popular with both voters and election administrators. That’s why, when the Presidential Voting Commission began its hearings to discuss issues with access to the polls, we submitted testimony advocating for the widespread adoption of this increasingly common reform.

The expansion of uses of ranked choice voting is an especially notable development at a time when gridlock and dysfunction in Congress have made cynicism about the American democratic process increasingly pervasive. Strong commentaries this year focused on how ranked choice voting can increase opportunities for racial minorities and heal our partisan, ideological divide, with FairVote having a series of our its similar commentaries in recent weeks in the Washington Post, Newsday, San Jose Mercury News, Cleveland Plain Dealer and more than a dozen other publications.

Next year offers more important ranked choice voting elections, including those in four California cities that use ranked choice voting. More than 60 colleges and universities now use it for student elections, and the Oscars use the multiseat form to nominate nearly all categories and the one-winner form to choose best picture. More states and cities are starting to consider ranked choice voting with a growing awareness that voting equipment vendors are making the reform easier to implement it. If you have questions about bringing ranked choice voting to your community, be sure to contact our team at FairVote.

Rob Richie is executive director of FairVote.

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A Farewell to AmericaSpeaks

Joe Goldman
/
January 2, 2014

One of the leading innovators in the field of public deliberation, AmericaSpeaks, recently announced that it is closing its doors after almost 20 years in operation. As a recent funder of the organization, the Democracy Fund is sorry to see a grantee close their doors. As someone who has worked in many capacities for and with the organization since 1998, I’m especially saddened by the news. While the organization’s work will continue through many other forms, there can be no doubt that its leadership, creativity, and vision will be missed.

Over the years, AmericaSpeaks directly engaged hundreds of thousands of people in deliberation and touched the lives of millions. I personally witnessed citizens break down into tears many times because they felt heard for the first time and were moved by truly experiencing democracy in action. AmericaSpeaks’ work has meant a great deal to so many people. Whether it was engaging citizens in shaping New Orleans’ recovery plan after Hurricane Katrina or helping federal employees to develop better ways to involve the public, the organization was an important force for the highest values of our democracy.

A website has been created to share memories of AmericaSpeaks. AmericaSpeaks has also compiled a legacy document that summarizes the organization’s accomplishments and is worth reading. It seems appropriate to take this moment to reflect on what AmericaSpeaks is leaving behind. I’m sure that others will comment on these topics, but I’d like to offer my own take here.

Innovation

The two things that I always liked best about AmericaSpeaks were its ambitious vision for our democracy and the continued willingness of the organization to innovate. Some would point to the 21st Century Town Meeting model as the most important AmericaSpeaks’ innovation. Certainly, the widespread use of audience response systems in public meetings and the use of the 21st Century Town Meeting model in such places as Denmark, Australia, England, Italy, and elsewhere, are a testament to this. But for me, there are several other innovations that are just as significant (and often overlooked). Among them are:

  • Participatory Budgeting and Strategic Management: The first major initiative that I managed for AmericaSpeaks was a participatory budgeting program for the Mayor of Washington DC in 1999 called Neighborhood Action (I eventually joined the staff of the Mayor’s Office to coordinate their Neighborhood Action program for Mayor Anthony Williams’ chief of staff). Long before Chicago or New York adopted participatory budgeting, AmericaSpeaks designed a process that engaged thousands of DC residents in shaping the city’s priorities, which then drove the city’s strategic plan, municipal budget, performance contracts for agency directors, and a public score card for the city.

    Over the course of Mayor Williams’ eight years in office, the “Neighborhood Action” program influenced the deployment of millions of dollars in city funds. At the neighborhood level, planning department staff worked with citizens to develop strategic neighborhood action plans that were linked to cross agency teams who were charged with addressing critical neighborhood needs. I’m unaware of any example of a municipal program in a major city that more comprehensively put citizens at the center of planning and priority setting as was instituted under the Williams Administration. While few have attempted to replicate the DC model, it is worth paying attention to the Washington DC Neighborhood Action initiative as participatory budgeting begins to really take off across the US over the next few years.

  • Open Government: President Obama’s Open Government Initiative brought a focus on openness to the federal government in 2008. However, despite the Obama Administration’s verbal commitment to transparency, participation, and collaboration, the primary focus of the initiative from its early days was on transparency. AmericaSpeaks was one of the most vocal organizations pushing the White House and federal agencies to remember the President’s commitment to participation. The organization was instrumental in articulating the core principles that would be required for executive branch innovation – many of which would go on to influence elements of the open government program. AmericaSpeaks convened federal managers to develop recommendations for Administration policies towards greater participation. It also authored several important reports evaluating the Administration’s progress and making recommendations for improvement.

Proof Points

The last 25 years represent an important period of research and development for the field of public deliberation. AmericaSpeaks and its peers developed a series of innovative formats for engaging the public on the premise that diverse groups of citizens could find common ground on complex policy issues in ways that could improve the governance process. While these processes have not been institutionalized at a scale that had been hoped for, we have demonstrated the value and potential for integrating public deliberation into our governance processes.

To this end, AmericaSpeaks is leaving behind an important paper trail that proves that many of the principles behind deliberative democracy are well-founded and do work. Independent researchers documented the impacts of many of AmericaSpeaks projects. Over the years, they found that citizens learned from public deliberations, changed their points of view, gained a greater sense of efficacy, and took action as a result of their participation. At the same time, evaluators found that well designed public deliberations led to important, meaningful policy changes.

One set of evaluations looked at the degree to which deliberation could influence policy and decision making.

  • A Harvard University study of AmericaSpeaks involvement in the creation of the Unified New Orleans plan after Hurricane Katrina found that the public’s involvement significantly impacted stakeholder’s views about the planning process. The evaluator interviewed two dozen New Orleans leaders about the impact of the deliberations. She found that the AmericaSpeaks’ work enhanced the credibility of the plan. Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge Morrell told the Harvard researcher: “I think it has done more to bring credibility to the table than all of the little individual meetings that people go to.”
  • Interviews with stakeholders by Columbia University researchers in New York after AmericaSpeaks’ 21st Century Town Meeting about the World Trade Center redevelopment process found that the public had a significant impact on the planning. For example, the Vice President for Design and Planning at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation told the evaluators that the AmericaSpeaks town meeting was “critical in giving him the leverage he needed to open up the design process against the original wishes of the Port Authority.” According to the New York Times: Governor Pataki decided it was “time to go back to the drawing board” in response to “a wave of public dismay over the first designs for rebuilding Lower Manhattan” as articulated through the AmericaSpeaks deliberations.

Other studies focused on the effects that deliberation has on individual participants. For example:

  • A Northwestern University study of a series of deliberations on Social Security found that “not only did attendees say their understanding of facts of Social Security increased as a result of their participation in the forum, but also their responses to a series of six factual questions showed their overall knowledge really did increase.” The evaluation went on to say that, “after the forum, attendees were dramatically more likely than others to say they spent time thinking about talking about, and reading about Social Security.”
  • The same Columbia University study of the AmericaSpeaks town meeting on the world trade center development process mentioned above also reported that: “A respondent who described herself as politically conservative said she was “amazed at what came out of my mouth. I said there should be low income housing down there.” She explained that the discussion gave her “time to really think about things I’ve never thought about very much” and she came to believe “this could be a new beginning for a lot of—for our city and for all of us—and to have low income and middle income housing…would be a new beginning.”
  • Research by professors at Harvard and the University of California found that participants in a statewide discussion on health care were far more likely to take action out of a town meeting than those from a control group: “One of the most striking findings from our research so far is that those who participated in the CaliforniaSpeaks town meeting were far more likely to engage in a range of political acts on the health care issue — such as contacting public officials, volunteering for organizations, signing or circulating petitions, calling in to a radio station, and contacting other media.”
  • The same researchers from Harvard and the University of California found that participants in a national discussion on debt and deficit moderated their views and reported high value from the event: “On different policy items, liberals and conservatives seem to have given ground on their specific priorities in order to help achieve this goal over the course of deliberation. For example, conservatives became more supportive of raising taxes on the very wealthy (liberals began with high levels of support for this measure and didn’t change much). To a similar degree, liberals became more supportive of a 5% across the board cut to discretionary programs after one day of deliberation.”

It’s worth noting that the study of public deliberation within the fields of political science and communications has dramatically expanded over AmericaSpeaks tenure. There is little doubt in my mind that AmericaSpeaks played a significant role in this development through such things as the creation of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium and the Journal of Public Deliberation, the publication of the Deliberative Democracy Handbook, and its many researcher and practitioner convenings on deliberative democracy.

Looking to the Future

Looking forward, I think the great challenge for the public deliberation community will be to figure out how to institutionalize the practices that have been developed over the past two decades by AmericaSpeaks and its peers. In the past,, the public deliberation community has valued adherence to the core principles of deliberative democracy at the expense of broader adoption of practices that engage and empower the public. AmericaSpeaks itself in partnership with Face the Facts worked to marry the production of events, media, and deliberative practices in 2011 and 2012 with the support of the Democracy Fund. However, as a community, we have too often criticized practices that do not live up to our standards even though they have the potential to provide more people with a greater voice in our democracy. While we should not give up on our principles, we need to acknowledge that not enough progress has been made in institutionalizing the practices that we have spent so many years developing and defending.

When I look at the field of practice today, I am most excited by those organizations that are working to institutionalize deliberative practices in ways that directly respond to core incentives that drive the behavior of major institutions in our political system (and that do so with relatively little expense). Participatory budgeting and citizen initiative reviews are two of the most important examples of deliberative practices that can be easily institutionalized and scaled. Both have their shortcomings, but will only improve with time. Similarly, Talia Stroud’s work at the Engaging News Project is finding inexpensive ways that newsrooms can changes to how they present information on their web sites that incentivize greater engagement and deliberation (and that also attracts more readers and more revenue for the publications).

The biggest vacuum that AmericaSpeaks leaves behind in its wake is its vision for national deliberations that provide the public with a voice in the national decisions that are made in their name. I am hopeful that organizations like Voice of the People, PopVox, and the National Institute for Civil Discourse will fill some of this void – though their solutions look very different than those envisioned by AmericaSpeaks. Hopefully, the national discussion on mental health that was co-sponsored by multiple deliberative organizations will also point the field in a new and productive direction.

Thanks

The staff, associates, and partners of AmericaSpeaks are some of the most impressive and talented people with whom I have ever worked I cannot count the number of times that I have seen this group accomplish seemingly impossible tasks under the most challenging circumstances. It has been an honor and a privilege to be associated with each and every one of you. Thank you to Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer, Steve Brigham, and everyone else who made this organization’s work possible.

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Local Journalism – What will the new ecosystem look like?

Tom Glaisyer
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January 16, 2014

Last year, the Democracy Fund convened a cross section of journalists, editors, and media experts to begin a dialogue about the major issues facing the field. It was a productive discussion that has greatly informed our approach to ensuring that the public has the information it needs to make informed choices. Perhaps the clearest priority voiced at the forum (and one that has the greatest impact on our thinking) is the need to support and improve the quality of journalism at the local level.

The challenges for reporters and publishers at the local level are legion—audience size is limited, online advertising rates aren’t anything like the rates obtained by print publications in the past, staff numbers in such outlets are small, and there are few opportunities for reporters to develop distinct capabilities or expertise. In the last months, the downsizing at Patch (AOL’s hyper-local network) and in Gannett’s community publishing division has just reinforced how tough this space is for all.

Since our spring 2013 meeting, I have been exploring how we can best understand the needs in this space and have been heartened by the research into news deserts being undertaken by Michelle Ferrier and the development of MediaCloud and the MediaMeter mapping the level at which the Boston Globe covers news stories. Thanks to these and other projects, we may soon be better able to understand both coverage and consumption at a much more granular manner than before.

What I have become most interested in are three themes that appear to be emerging as local news ecosystems transition:

1. Collaboration and sharing at a regional level.

One solution to the challenge facing local journalism is higher efficiency in the production of stories, or broader distribution through regional collaborations. As Jan Schaffer’s very useful recent research shows, collaborative efforts are emerging across the country. In Colorado, a local collaboration been led by the INewsNetwork started off as an independent organization and has now become part of a local PBS television station and built partnerships with 21 other outlets. In New Jersey, Montclair University’s School of Communications and Media is hosting NJCommons an effort to build collaboration between outlets within the state. This includes a story exchange as well as providing training to partner organizations. Other partnerships such as IdeaStream in North East Ohio that combines public television, radio, public access cable, and an online engagement platform shows how collaboration can grow within public media.

Regional and topic focused collaborations have also emerged. In radio, there has been the State Impact Project across public radio and partnering outlets. In public television, multiple local journalism centers have been set up. How much of this infrastructure will survive in the long term is unclear, but collaboration, often in a non-traditional manner, seems to be central to the provision and distribution of public interest journalism.

2. Specialization of outlets around news beats.

All too often, reporters at local papers simply do not have the bandwidth to develop the specialized knowledge they need to cover complex stories. Outlets that focus on a single beat can address this challenge by enabling local media to build on top of reporting they do and adding a local flavor. InsideClimateNews, winner of a Pulitzer for National Reporting in 2013, is perhaps one of the most well known example of a successful vertical outlet. They actively encourage republishing of their stories. ProPublica, goes a step further and provocatively asks people to steal their stories. The presence of non-profits such as the Food and Environmental Reporting Network suggest that there is momentum in provision of specialized beat news. In particular, Homicide Watch has been lauded for its coverage in D.C. and has expanded to Chicago via a partnership with the Sun Times.

3. Provision of services by a central organization

Another solution to improve local coverage is for small outlets to rely on a central entity to provide them with shared resources. The Shorenstein Center publishes Journalists Resource with the objective of providing journalists with easy access to relevant academic scholarship that can aid reporters. The Investigative Reporters and Editors organization has long provided datasets and operates DocumentCloud. For its part, our new grantee, the Investigative News Network provides a customized WordPress configuration that they are willing to customize further and host for organizations. The Public Insight Network operated by American Public Media serves as a source development platform for a number of outlets. The soon to be launched FOIA Machine platform is another great example. Nearly all of these are solutions narrowly tailored to a particular challenge but all seem to represent a promising trajectory.

There are many reasons to be cautious about the future of local news and journalism, but the impact of these three threads coming together in the right way appear considerable. We don’t know all the answers and how this field will develop, but we will continue to explore the space and welcome input on Twitter. @tglaisyer.

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How Do Foundations Support our Democracy?

Joe Goldman
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June 7, 2014

This past week, the Democracy Fund and seven peer funders joined with the Foundation Center to launch the beta version of a new interactive map and database that documents how foundations fund our democracy and democracy reform. The new tool tracks funding across an intentionally broad set of categories, including money in politics, election reform, redistricting, civil liberties, open government, public administration, investigative journalism, media literacy, access to broadband internet, civic education, volunteerism, and public participation.

Our hope is that this new tool will help raise awareness about how the field is funded, so that we can make more strategic decisions about where dollars should go in the future. The map will also be helpful for new entrants into the field as they chart their own course and to prospective grantees who are seeking out new funders or partners.

The data remains incomplete and rough around the edges because of the challenges of compiling data on foundation funding and significant inconsistencies in how funders label and describe the grants that they make. Nevertheless, I find the current version to be tremendously helpful and am hopeful that the data will become significantly more complete over time.

Three things initially jumped out at me from reviewing the beta version of the tool.

First, while the overall amount of money going into the field is relatively large (about $450 million from 355 foundations to 1,570 recipients in 2012), the amount that is going into actual reform of our political system is shockingly low by almost any standard (and the total amount remains quite small compared to other major fields of reform). While these numbers are certainly incomplete, it appears that between $6.4M and $14.2M was invested in election and campaign finance reform efforts in 2012 (this does not include funds aimed at mobilizing voters.) Even if we assume that the actual numbers are twice as large, it is hard to look at this data and not be incredibly concerned.

Second, the fields within democracy reform are remarkably uneven in their development and maturity. In some subfields, like civil liberties, we can see strong anchor organizations (like the ACLU) and a wide diversity of funders. Other subfields,like campaign finance reform, appear to be quite fragmented and populated by organizations that are rather small relative to the challenges on which they are working.

Third, the field of democracy reform remains highly polarized. There appear to be very few areas where progressive and conservative funders are jointly funding work in the same area, let alone the same organizations, outside of the fields of civil liberties and volunteerism.

I hope that other funders, as well as reform leaders, will take advantage of this new tool to take part in collaborative discussions about the health of the political reform community and how we can guide funding flows in the future to produce stronger advocates and better reform. I am confident that it will shape the trajectory of the Democracy Fund and our partners going forward.

We are especially grateful to the Hewlett Foundation for their leadership in initiating this process and for the Foundation Center’s staff for their excellent work in creating the database and tool. This is incredibly hard work and everyone involved has demonstrated remarkable commitment and skill.

Please take a moment to visit the Foundation Center’s site and provide them with feedback on how the tool could be more complete and more useful.

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The Democracy Fund Relaunches as an Independent Foundation

Joe Goldman
/
June 30, 2014

We have incubated the Democracy Fund within Omidyar Network over the past three years as a unique philanthropic enterprise driven by Pierre Omidyar’s vision to address the perilous state of our democracy and rebuild public confidence in our political institutions. During this time, we have committed nearly $20 million to support organizations working to strengthen our media, improve the administration of our election and campaign finance systems, and foster more effective governance in the United States.

When Pierre asked me in the Spring of 2011 to develop this new program, I could not have imagined the incredible journey I was about to embark upon. Three years later, I am excited to share that the Democracy Fund will re-launch itself this summer as an independent private foundation within The Omidyar Group.

The Democracy Fund remains committed to the priorities we have set out in our three core initiatives. Our support for grantees like the Investigative News Network, the American Press Institute, Healthy Democracy, and the Engaging News Project will continue to foster innovative new practices within and outside of journalism to better inform voters. We will continue to work with grantees like Pew’s Elections Initiatives, TurboVote, the Committee for Economic Development, and Fund for the Republic to pursue common sense solutions for fixing our election and campaign finance systems. And our work with grantees like the Bipartisan Policy Center, the No Labels Foundation, the Faith & Politics Institute, and the National Institute for Civil Discourse will continue to build bridges across the aisle and seek out ways for our government to solve problems in the face of increased polarization.

Going forward, the Democracy Fund will collaborate with its peers to drive funds towards major gaps in the field. We will seek to complement our grant making with more direct involvement in pursuing our goals through advocacy, research, thought leadership, and convening. We will maintain a strong commitment to pursue bipartisan solutions to the challenges facing our political system.

Pierre has become Chairman of our new Board of Directors and will remain the sole funder of our work. I will transition from my role as Director to become President of the Democracy Fund. Tom Glaisyer and Adam Ambrogi will continue to direct our initiatives on Informed Participation and Responsive Politics respectively. They will be joined later this year by a third Program Director for our initiative on Problem Solving and Governance.

We are also pleased to share that Senior Consultant for Operations Margaret Yao will be joined by Tony Bowen as our Manager of Operations, Finance, and Grants Management. Natalie Adona and Megan Mohr have also joined our team as our first Democracy Fellows. Several additional members of the Democracy Fund will be announced in the coming weeks and months as we continue to grow our team.

Today, we posted two open Program Associate positions that we hope to fill over the summer. Please take a look at the job postings on our blog to learn more about the positions and how to apply.

We are deeply grateful to our colleagues at Omidyar Network who have served as mentors, partners, and friends over the past three years. Their work to create a world of positive returns inspires us and we continue to be guided by their values. Without their patient support and counsel, the Democracy Fund would not be the organization that it is today. We look forward to continued collaboration to advance our respective goals.

The Fourth of July is a time for us to reflect upon the founding values and vision of our nation. While the dream of a country that is truly governed “of, by, and for the people” may sometimes feel out of our reach, it is incumbent upon each of us to do our part as Americans to continue to carry the torch of democracy and combat those forces and trends that threaten to extinguish it. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable…Every step towards the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” At the Democracy Fund, we are honored to have the opportunity and resources to contribute to this important struggle and hope that you will join us in the days, months, and years to come.

At this moment of transition and possibility, we remain as inspired as ever by the potential for the American people to come together and rise to meet the historic challenges facing our political system.

Democracy Fund is a foundation working to build an inclusive, multiracial democracy that is open, just, resilient, and trustworthy.

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