Page 95 - Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections

An example: For an electoral reform project where you are asking your community how many people get elected in each district, you have many options. Take the specific issue of whether or not people would like multi- member wards, single member wards or no wards at all. If you do not have much time, you can use a survey that asks for responses on principles, values and priorities. What is important to you in your local political representative? That they live near you? That they have the same views as you? That they have a similar lived experience to you? These questions ask for responses that are not direct yes or no answer to a technical question. They still give you insight into what is important to the community without limiting the framing. If you do have time, you can use a long form deliberation that involves members of the community assessing a diversity of relevant sources before making a common ground decision on the various aspects of an issue. Using the previous example, this might include an electoral authority, governance or politics academics, former politicians, people who thought about running or were unsuccessful in a previous campaign being asked to help inform citizens and exposing them to a mix of views. 93