Page 197 - Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections

If any one recommendation is on the borderline you can have a discussion about minor changes but this late into the process is not the time to do major rewrites of any recommendations (this should have been completed previously). Minor changes are crucial to getting people ‘over the line’ and supporting recommendations enough to include them in the final report. The key thing to keep in mind at this point is that any adjustments should not change the intent of a recommendation. Keep reiterating this to the group. Depending on the size of your group, you may need to use some different tools to help speed up the process of testing each recommendation. One method is to work in small groups, each group deliberates and decides whether or not the group supports a recommendation. If a majority of groups support a recommendation, then it passes. Streamlining this process loses the nuance of minor changes so should be used with large groups under time constraints. You can also make use of digital polling software that allows participants to immediately vote on a recommendation – this will speed up the ‘hand count’ process and allows for a fluid voting dynamic where people can change while having a conversation about tweaks and changes. The core of this step is that you are ensuring you have agreement and consent from the group that each recommendation has sufficient support from the group to be in the report. 195