We have just completed 100 years of experimentation with the initiative in California. It was intended to empower the people to initiate the agenda for elections in which all the voters cast ballots. But the signature gathering process has itself become a barrier to the people’s agenda. Successful proposals are usually sponsored by special interests, often quite narrow ones, that seek their own advantage in winning a public vote or in placing a competing measure on the ballot to confuse the public. A threshold of 8% of the votes for valid signatures requires a massive and expensive effort—perhaps three million dollars this year. While the people get to vote on the resulting proposals, what they vote on may have little connection to their real concerns for how best to fix the state. Voter discussion and voter review of propositions already determined will not fix this question of how to get the public’s thoughtful input on setting the agenda in the first place.

What’s Next California charts a new path. The first statewide Deliberative Poll® in California demonstrates how the people can take control of the agenda for direct democracy (see http://www.nextca.org ). If it succeeds in this pilot project in charting a path to a successful initiative, it should be institutionalized. The basic idea is simple.  A scientific random sample of registered voters is surveyed about an extensive agenda of possible reforms. The sample is then recruited to travel to a single place for a long weekend of intensive deliberations, evaluating competing proposals for a ballot measure based on carefully balanced and vetted information materials about the competing proposals. The sample should be representative in demographics and attitudes of the entire electorate. Their deliberations consist in small group discussions and then questions from the small groups directed to competing experts in plenary sessions. The entire process is supervised by a non-partisan advisory group who certify the balance and accuracy of the materials detailing the proposals and the balance of the expert panels who respond to the public’s questions. This process was conducted early this summer by a coalition of eight organizations with broadcast around the state of a PBS Newshour documentary about the process and its results. An excellent scientific sample of more than 400 registered voters attended the weekend. The whole state was, in effect, placed in one room to deliberate about priorities for fixing the state. The participants, who began as a representative microcosm, became more knowledgeable and changed their views. Some of the 30 proposals they considered went up significantly with deliberation, some went down (see http://cdd.stanford.edu/polls/california/ ). Most importantly, six of the proposals that started high and went even higher with deliberation have been crafted into a ballot measure, the California Governance and Accountability Act, which is going on the ballot now (see http://www.cafwd-action.org/pages/proposed-ballot-measure ). This initiative brings transparency and accountability to the state government’s budget process and helps bring local control of some services provided at the local level.

The six proposals all started with majority support and went significantly higher with a minimum of 72% support after deliberation. The Deliberative Poll revealed how and why these proposals speak to the people’s priorities. The deliberations of the microcosm enable the people to take ownership of an agenda setting process for the votes of everyone else.

In Ancient Athens there was an institution chosen by lottery or random sampling, the Council of 500, that deliberated and set the agenda for what everyone would vote on in the Assembly. In a similar way, the Deliberative Poll has set an agenda for what everyone will vote on in a ballot proposition in 2012. In Athenian democracy, this was a regular institutionalized occurrence. If this were institutionalized in California, it would not only speak to very ancient democratic values, it would also live up to the aspiration of the Progressives, a century ago, to empower the people to determine what they vote on. Is this a practical possibility in a mega state like California?

What’s Next California and the resulting ballot proposition is a pilot of this idea. Institutionalizing it would face a series of challenges that all seem eminently practical but that all need careful thought. Where do the proposals come from that the people choose between? How, if at all, are they vetted before the people deliberate? How are factual materials to explain background on the issues developed? How are experts chosen who can respond to questions from the sample? How are the results of the Deliberative Poll-like process connected to the wording or revision of the ballot proposition? What threshold of support would qualify a measure to go on the ballot? Would measures go directly on the ballot or could they go on the ballot with a lower signature threshold after this process? All of these issues merit public debate and careful institutional design. Some of them might be made the subject of another Deliberative Poll. But all of them were faced informally by the pilot phase. And many issues, such as information materials have to be faced anyway by ballot propositions.

Deliberative Polls in various contexts around the world show that the people are, collectively very smart, and fully capable of dealing with complex public issues when they think their voice matters. The challenge for reviving California’s direct democracy is to design institutions where the collective intelligence of the public can be harnessed to initiate the people’s agenda.

What's Next California? — the first state-wide deliberative poll in California — was conducted in 2011 and covered four basic areas: the initiative process, the Legislature, state/local relations and tax/fiscal issues. Thirty proposals were deliberated by a statewide scientific sample of 412 participants. Their conclusions offered many surprises. A panel of three key organizers of the project — James Fishkin of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University, Zabrae Valentine of California Forward and Lenny Mendonca of McKinsey & Company — will discuss the project process and findings. The event will include a screening of the PBS NewsHour-produced documentary about the project, narrated by Judy Woodruff.

To learn more and RSVP, click here.

The PBS Newshour By the People special documentary covering the What's Next California Deliberative Poll begins airing this evening on PBS SoCal. Below is an introductory excerpt from the documentary, which will air around the state on PBS stations through September and October. The current broadcast schedule is now available; check local listings for additional broadcast times.

Additional excerpts from the program are available on the four topic discussion pages: Initiative Process, Representation, State-Local Reform, and Taxation & Fiscal Policy. You'll find these and many other videos from the event on the NextCA.org video channel and YouTube.

This is the key takeaway from What's Next California's Deliberative Poll results, which were released on Monday.

The poll took place on a sunny, late-June weekend in Torrance. Four hundred Californians from all walks of life were carefully chosen to best represent California's entire voting population and given accommodations for the weekend.

They were polled on the same set of issues before and after spending two days discussing those issues in moderated small group session and large plenary Q & A's. It was a massive undertaking meant to provide some of the most viable polling data around.

Monday at a news conference in Sacramento, What's Next California released a detailed analysis of the differences between the before and after polls. Here is what we found:

There was a signifcant increase (+47%) in the desire for longer state legislative terms, a decrease in the desire for a part-time legislature (-18%), and an increase in support for expanding the legislature (+13%). "The participants clearly thought that legislators needed to spend less time campaigning and more time legislating if they were to represent their districts effectively," said the authors of the analysis.

On the ballot initiative process, attendees were heavily against allowing lawmkers the power to amend an approved initiative (24% in favor), and even moreso at the end of the weekend (18% in favor). They were, however, in favor of allowing the authors of the initiative to make changes after the fact (76% wanted this, a +17% change). And finally, they wanted the Top 5 financial backers of the pro and con campaigns for each initiative to be made public (91% of attendees in favor).

James Fishkin, who spearheaded this effort and has conducted deliberative polls all over the world through Stanford's Center for Deliberative Democracy took this to mean one thing: "They believe this is the people's process."

Hear more on the results from Fishkin, as well as Lenny Mendonca, who was another primary sponsor of the poll, in the video below. You'll also hear from Pastor Joyce Cooksey James, who was a participant in the polling weekend. She echoed the sentiment of many who attended: that it inspired them to think differently about their relationship with government and their community.

"Ordinary polls provide a momentary snapshot of the public's impressions of sound bites and headlines," said Stanford University's James Fishkin, who developed and ran the deliberative poll on behalf of a large group of organizers and sponsors with an interest in reforming California's government. "Deliberative polling shows what a scientific sample of the public thinks about policy issues if they have the opportunity to dig a little deeper and really explore the issues."

The poll focused on six essential areas: reforming the Legislature, reforming the initiative process, state-local government restructuring, tax and fiscal reforms, and efficacy and "mutual respect" between voters and representatives, as well as their evaluations of the process itself.
 

View and download the poll results and stay tuned to NextCA.org for future developments and discussion.

You can also visit the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University for more about this unique process.

In California's first ever historic deliberative poll, participants reflecting the Golden State overwhelmingly agreed it is possible to come together and supported reforms that would improve the legislature's ability to do its job. Many also had a change of heart on some issues after discussing them with peers.

The results of the unprecedented What's Next California civic engagement project will be unveiled at a news conference and panel in the state's capital.
 

The event will also feature Joyce Cooksey-James of Sacramento, Calif, who was a randomly-selected Deliberative Poll participant.  Distribution of poll results and remarks will be followed by a panel discussion and Q &A session.  Other poll participants and members of the media, capitol staff and the public are invited to attend. Click here to RSVP.

The deliberative poll participants came away with an in-depth knowledge of how their state works and why it often doesn't. They also had a unique opportunity to talk with folks outside of their social circles back home. As one participent remarked, "I learned that I can talk to people who don't look like me, people I never would have talked to before."

Many participants exchanged phone numbers and email addresses before the weekend was over, in order to continue the conversation, while others posted on the Facebook and Flickr pages. Two even decided to share their experiences with their communities via their local newspapers:

From Tracy Potter in the Oakland Local:

This event was a wake-up call about how out-of-touch I really am from California politics.

I consider myself to be educated and relatively informed, but as a young, busy - VERY busy - mom who relies on Facebook posts for most of my news, I realized I had forgotten that Jerry Brown had already started his recent term as governor. It’s not that I wasn’t voting; I voted in November and pored over the initiative results. I was just totally disconnected from politics once the polls closed and the excitement went away.

From what I gathered at this event, my situation isn’t that unusual.

Truly, I now have a much greater appreciation for the many layers of our legislative system and the contradictory philosophies of how best to generate revenues for public services while encouraging economic growth. As a budding entrepreneur and hopeful homeowner, I had a tough time finding a balance between wanting to save money for myself and wanting to help my government provide necessary services.

From Arlen Grossman in the Monterey Herald:

I was pleasantly surprised to find that in my small group, despite a wide range of views, we were able to maintain a serious, but pleasant and cooperative attitude. I heard similar feedback from other groups. One memorable moment for me occurred at the beginning of our first small group get-together. One of our members insisted that immigration was the big issue in California, and he loudly insisted we would talk about it even if it wasn't on the agenda. Nobody else agreed with him, and he removed himself from our group for a while. By the end of the weekend, he was back in our group and politely discussing the designated issues.

...

Among the participants I talked to, most indicated they had little knowledge of how our state government worked, but said they learned a lot from the poll process and expected to be more interested and involved when they returned home.

From Florence 'Winkie' Evans in the Visalia Times-Delta & Tulare Advance-Register:

There were 19 people in my group. It was an amazing experience. We were a bunch of strangers, from different backgrounds, economic levels, political persuasions, ages, ethnicities and professions, and we were all respectful of each other, listening to one another, expressing different thoughts, observations, considerations, concerns. Everyone spoke up at least a few times, and I thought that was the norm for all 25 groups.

...

It was eye-opening and encouraging to me to see that we could discuss the workings of government from our varied perspectives and do so civilly. It also illustrated that average, everyday people had legitimate contributions to make in regard to our state, and that they would do so if given information and opportunity.

The Deliberative Poll, created by Professor James Fishkin of Stanford's Center for Deliberative Democracy, took a representative sample of Californians and convened them for a weekend of small group discussions and large group plenary sessions moderated by PBS's Judy Woodruff, with expert panelists to engage in deliberation on topics of California government reform. Participants explored four topics: initiative reform, legislative representation, restructuring state and local control issues, and taxation. The participants were eager to express their opinions, and worked diligently to find possible solutions to the aforementioned complex issues.  

As an observer at What's Next California, I witnessed the group dynamics of the small group discussions and the interactions among the participants and experts in the large group plenary sessions. 

This event had a large digital component: Twitter updates among the observers, participants, and experts fed through the weekend at hashtag: #NextCA; live streaming video of the news conference Friday featuring David Davenport, James Fishkin, and Lenny Mendonca; PBS videotaped the event for their documentary program "By the People;" and the digital team uploaded video interviews, tweets, Facebook updates, blogs, and articles in real time.  What's Next California was definitely the most technologically-driven event I've witnessed. 

The participants were prepared to engage in real conversations about political reform, but also expressed the frustration, confusion, and exhaustion of California's general voting public. 

In the first plenary discussion, a group asked a simple question: how can ballot initiatives, their title and summary, be written clearly and concisely, so that the general public thoroughly understands what voting for and what voting against the initiative represents?  As one participant stated, "I want to understand what no means, and what yes means." 

Another participant during this same discussion opined that there is logic behind the confusing language of initiatives.  "Initiatives are sold to the public just like Coca-Cola, in a way in which you will buy it." 

The participants, though frustrated and sometimes cynical of government, attended the event with hopes of creating change to improve California's governance.  As one participant declared, "We need public servants to represent the common good."

Topics and ideas that the participants routinely addressed were: accountability, lack of communication, duplicate efforts by different agencies providing the same service, the power of lobbyists/special interests, transparency in costs as well as the organizations/people/party affiliations of the writers of the initiatives, equity of services geographically if services are restructured from state to local control, and caution that whatever agent of change used to solve such large complex issues, doesn't create even larger unintended consequences than the status quo. 

During plenary sessions, panelists answered questions from the participants, as well as weighed in on the issues.  Said panelist Senator Michael Rubio: "How do we show our constituents we are providing them their money's worth? Government's bottom line is how large are the benefits off the investment.  We need to have performance measurements in place, in order to be accountable to our constituents." 

Senator Rubio challenged the participants to hold their elected officials accountable. "It starts with us, with asking the right questions.  Accountability starts with us," he said.

This event, historic in nature, and large in scale, brought together more than 400 ordinary citizens to find solutions to extraordinary problems. As Lenny Mendonca stated during the kickoff press conference, "People should get an opportunity to have their voices heard." 

The participants this weekend not only found their collective voice, but demanded to be heard.  Results of the Deliberative Poll will be tabulated and released publicly; this ensures momentum towards California political reform, as well as ensuring that the voices of California's people are heard. 

Kati Koster is a Master Candidate 2012 at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy, and a communications intern with California Forward.

A group of more than 400 scientifically randomly sampled Californians gathered in Torrance last weekend to participate in deliberations over tax and fiscal reform; initiative process; reforming the way the legislature represents voters and reforming the way programs and services are delivered with more emphasis on local accountability and control.

The record turnout found that Californians are more than willing to engage when they feel their voices will be heard and their opinions have the ability to shape policy.

While data are still preliminary and full results are forthcoming, an initial analysis found:

• Strong demand for greater transparency and accountability
• Clear lack of trust in current system
• Strong desire for solutions
• Unwillingness to abdicate control to the legislature, but a recognition that the legislature needs tools to solve problems
   

"The impressions to take away from this poll are clear," said Lenny Mendonca, California Forward and New America Foundation. "Californians want to fix the problem and believe we can reach agreement on reasonable solutions. They are calling for greater accountability, transparency and want the legislature to stand up and develop solutions that will fix our problems for the long term.”

Specifically, the poll found the following changes in opinion after deliberation:

• Creating a formal review process to allow an initiative's proponents to amend an initiative following public input" support rose from 59% to 76% after deliberation.
• Publishing the top five contributors for and against each ballot measure in the ballot pamphlet" Support rose from 82% to 91%
• Allowing the legislature to amend an initiative that has already passed, subject to a public review and the agreement of the initiative's proponents" Opposition increased from 44% to 51%
   

Because of the unprecedented participation and larger sample size, full results are still being analyzed. Findings will be released  after a full scientific analysis and peer review. 

Jim Fishkin of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University and creator of the Deliberative Poll format, was enthusiastic about What's Next California.

"I have never seen engagement and excitement like last weekend," said Fishkin. "Californians are willing and able to engage when they trust their government and believe there will be a high level of transparency and accountability, I am hopeful these results change the dialogue in Sacramento and spur real change."

What's Next California partners also include the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership at Pepperdine University, California Common Cause, The Nicolas Berggruen Institute, The Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University, and MacNeil/Lehrer Production's By the People, which filmed the proceedings for a television special to be broadcast later this summer.

It was soon obvious I had nothing to worry about. Within five minutes, the group had taken over the conversation, and was engaged in a thoughtful, energetic discussion.  By the second session almost everyone was talking frequently, and the group took the initiative to encourage those who were hesitant.  Moderating the Deliberative Poll process is different than other types of moderation in that we were not trying to get our group to come to a consensus.  Rather, the purpose was to encourage them to listen to different viewpoints and consider their own opinions in light of better information.  As a moderator I just got to listen (and help us stay a little bit on task).

The conversation was not completely free of frustrations, and there were times disagreements began to be heated, but the participants were willing to clarify miscommunications and to offer respect for dissenting opinions. We hear much about polarization in California, and it was refreshing to see this type of collaboration.  Even when the majority were united on a point, they would intentionally seek out the response of someone who disagreed – often without any intervention from the moderator.  Every single one of the participants in my group expressed their appreciation for the opportunity to share in the discussion.  Perhaps most encouragingly, after the last session, one of the group members passed around a sheet of paper to collect email addresses "so we can keep this discussion going!."

Ashley Trim is a Research Coordinator at the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership at Pepperdine University.  She moderated Group 13 of the What's Next California Deliberative Poll.

"As we go back into our communities we can contribute to regional politics and local politics and begin to engage our friends and family and be more involved," said Natasha Stevvins of Los Angeles.

Sunday's final plenary session of the three-day Deliberative Poll featured a sometimes technical but informative discussion on taxes by a panel that included two rival experts in the filed, California consultants Joel Fox and Lenny Goldberg. When their debate threatened to devolve into another clash of dueling studies, moderator Jody Woodruff stepped in to steer them toward a meeting of the minds.

"You're going to come to agreement today," ordered the PBS anchor, eliciting laughter and applause from the 400 poll participants gathered in the main ballroom.

The mid-day panel, which also featured tax experts Mark Ibele and Annette Nellen, fielded questions from participants who had met earlier in small groups to hash out the state's complex tax challenges. Their concerns were reflected in the very first question: How can California achieve a tax system that is built on "simplicity, transparency and accountability."

For the next hour, the experts led the attentive audience through a maze of arcane, complex and tricky tax policy considerations which they have been thinking about for decades. The frugal bent of the audience was revealed when many applauded the mention of Fox's past connection to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which advocated for lower taxes.

One participant drew a laugh when he said sarcastically that the state some day will start testing people's lung capacity so it could "tax the air we breathe."

The session also revealed that cutting taxes is no easy matter. The panel expressed sometimes conflicting opinions that were convincing on both sides. The panel also made it clear that tax reform almost always has winners and losers, and policy-makers must take into account "who gets hurt" when changes are made.

The panel delved into a wide range of specifics:

Is California tax policy really hostile to business?

What are the top incentives for persuading business to stay in the state? (Answer: Good schools, good infrastructure, and good access to markets.)

Should services be taxed like tangible personal property, and if so, which ones and how?

What would be the impact on local retailers if online dealers such as Amazon had to pay state sales tax?

Should the legislature be allowed to raise taxes on a majority vote rather than the current two-thirds threshold?

Some simple ideas won very clear approval from the audience: Making it easy for people to know where their taxes go and making it harder for politicians to raise them without accountability.

In the end, Fox agreed with his rival on one point, the proposal of putting tax hikes on the ballot. So he acknowledged that Woodruff had accomplished her goal of extracting a consensus.

"I agree with Lenny," said Fox. "Let the people decide. I trust the people of California."

Before closing, Davenport urged participants to stay involved by going home and committing to take at least one civic action: Call their congressman, write a letter to the editor, join one of the sponsoring groups.

"We hope to light a fire here," said Davenport. "And we hope that fire will spread."

Agustin Gurza is a reporter for California Forward.

The evening panel, "How Do We Engage the Many Faces of California," initially sparked differences of opinion, and even some audible grumbling, among audience members. But panelists worked to navigate the topic by discussing how it can help enhance the state's future.

The night's most controversial remarks came from panelist Daniel Olivas, an author and attorney, who noted that immigrants tend to be scapegoated when economies falter. His remarks drew some heckling.

Panelist Ethan Rarick from UC Berkeley said diversity can become a dividing line when times get tough. In more homogenous societies, he explained, the public is more likely to willingly fund public services such as education and healthcare, because the benefits go to people who share group characteristics.  In more diverse communities, the general public is more reluctant to spend on those services.

"That makes governing California a more complex chore," he said. "It makes it harder."

In the end, Olivas struck a conciliatory note by urging the audience to continue communicating to help bring the state out of its current crisis. "When times are bad, I don't think we stop talking," he said to strong applause. "That's the time when we do start talking to each other. We can talk about things and reach common ground."

Plenty of common ground was found during the day's group discussions.  Despite the occasional ideological rant or recitation of talking points, most groups engaged in thoughtful and nuanced analysis of the issues they were charged to address – the initiative process, legislative representation, and restructuring of state and local government.

There were no pat answers to the problems. During one discussion about the virtue of increasing local representation, for example, one participant cautioned that politics was all about reconciling competing interests, at every level.

"Like it or not, we are all special interests," said Long Beach attorney Gene Erbstoesser. "If you're a property owner, you're a special interest. If you're a teacher, you're a special interest. We all have our interests and we want them to go to the front of the cue. And if they don't go to the front of the cue, we get upset."

As the day wore on, a spirit of camaraderie and good will developed among some groups, which evolved into real working teams. That positive spirit spilled over on Twitter, the social media site which was abuzz with posts about the event. One example from  @chakra5la: "Real citizens engaging in real dialogue about how to improve CA. Exciting 2 see strangers become inspired friends."

In one group, a serious political discussion got so productive that participants could not decide on a single question to submit to the plenary session at mid-day.

"Submit BOTH questions," suggested one man in a mock rebellious tone. "We're going to be on the cutting edge."

"Wait!" interjected another man in an instant satire of Sacramento gridlock. "Let's argue about which one we're going to submit."

In the end, each group selected a question that best represented their discussion. Representatives then read the questions aloud during a mid-day plenary session in the main ballroom, hosted by PBS "NewsHour" anchor Judy Woodruff. The session featured a panel of six experts who tackled the issues ranging from confusing ballot initiatives to the large size of California voting districts, by far the largest in the country.

Many people felt government was too big to be effective and they believed they would be better served if more decisions were handled at the local level. Indeed, a streak of distrust ran through many of the sessions. Not just distrust of politicians and their motivations, but distrust of the actual machinery of government itself.

In one session, for example, participants expressed suspicion of how authorities deliberately distort the wording of initiatives, leading one man to assert that "the Secretary of Sate had manipulated" the gay marriage measure. There was even the occasional Libertarian outburst with calls to dismantle the whole thing and throw all politicians out.

Steve Swan, an unemployed auto mechanic from Bloomington in San Bernardino County, originally hoped the conference would be an open-ended, brain-storming session on how to create a pure, direct democracy in California. The structured format didn't allow for that approach, he said during a cigarette break, but he wasn't disappointed.

"Disappointed? Of course not," said Swan, 47, who sports a thick beard and a cowboy hat. "I still got to speak my mind. My life's been enriched."

Agustin Gurza is a reporter for California Forward.

General consensus in two of the small groups was that the current initiative system is good in theory, but broken in practice. Deliberators criticized the number of initiatives on ballots and the lack of time to fully understand them.

Group members called for more transparency with the initiatives, including a full run-down of costs and information on the funders/proponents. There were strong concerns about the initiative system being abused and overused and the role of out-of-state money in influencing the processs.

One brave participant disagreed with the others, saying that he views the initiative process as a way for the public to govern, regardless of what the elected officials think. 

When asked if the legislature should be able to amend initiatives that pass, group members were strongly divided. Some thought that the legislative members should be allowed to make amendments as necessary, but many were very much against this idea, saying “that sounds dangerous” and “why would we want to do that?” Another participant worried that allowing legislators to make changes would make the entire initiative system unnecessary and a big waste of taxpayer time and money.

It will be interesting to see how and if participants change their views of the initiative system after the expert panel and continued deliberation. Stay tuned...

Now, as a union employee himself, he urges his fellow Californians to look at both sides of another contentious issue, the fight over cutting the state budget. He knows it’s easy to target education, which consumes the lion’s share, overall. "A lot of people see that big chunk of the pie and say we’ll shave another billion," says Kramer, 39, who’s been teaching for 13 years. But when those cuts trickle down to his small Rosedale Union School District, they cut to the bone.

When originally interviewed as a candidate for the Deliberative Poll, the issues that most intrigued him, not surprisingly, were taxes and the budget. Those are hitting close to home, just like the farm worker fight once did. For Kramer, who does missionary work teaching vacation Bible study in Mexico and elsewhere, political discussions have never been just theoretical.

But he’s dead serious about what he sees as the uncertain future of California.

“I want to make sure my son has a California he’s able to enjoy as much as I have,” he says.

Agustin Gurza is a reporter for California Forward.

David Davenport is the Co-Chairman of What's Next California and a member of the California Forward Leadership Council.

Day 1: Welcome dinner and first small group meetings

Day 2: Small group sessions

Day 2: Plenary session on initiative process and representation

"The result will chart "a route to responsible advocacy,"  said James Fishkin, Director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University, which is leading the poll. "It is not misleading advocacy," he added, "but advocacy based on good information."

Organizers at the press conference also addressed the belief, in some cynical quarters, that the public is either too apathetic or just "not smart enough" to address crucial issues directly. Fishkin said the experience in countries such as Great Britain, Bulgaria, Hungary, Thailand and Northern Ireland prove precisely the opposite. 

The Deliberative Poll, which runs through Sunday, is being sponsored by a coalition of non-partisan reform organizations, academics and journalists. They include California Forward, the New America Foundation, the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership at Pepperdine University, the Public Policy Institute of California, the Nicholas Berggruen Institute, the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University, and California Common Cause.

Agustin Gurza is a reporter for California Forward.

Part 2:

Learn more and comment the Representation topic page and check out the full Participant Guide.

Learn more and comment the State-Local Reform topic page and check out the full Participant Guide.

Learn more and comment the Initiative Process topic page and check out the full Participant Guide.

Learn more and comment the Taxation & Fiscal Policy topic page and check out the full Participant Guide.

Mouse over any dot below to learn more about the diversity of Deliberative Poll participants. (If nothing pops up, zoom in on the map -- that means there are multiple participants in close proximity!)

You can learn more about the entire process here, and see a larger version of this map here.

If you'd like to embed this map on your own blog or website -- whether for the whole state or to zoom in on particular region -- you can customize and then grab the embed code here.

In the video below, Mr. Dutta urges participants to "speak up" so that experts and elected officials are able to hear "from the people who are affected most by budget cuts."

Joel Fox operates Joel Fox Consulting, a public affairs/political consulting firm. He also currently serves as president of the Small Business Action Committee, founded in 2003 to battle for small business on important political issues.  Prior to starting his own firm in 1999, Fox worked for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, serving as the association’s president from 1986 to 1998. He is also an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University.

Lenny Goldberg is Executive Director of the California Tax Reform Association (CTRA) and owner of Lenny Goldberg and Associates, a public interest consulting and lobbying firm.  On behalf of CTRA he has been involved with major tax issues in California for the past 25 years, in the legislature, at the Franchise Tax Board and Board of Equalization, and with many tax measures on the ballot. His lobbying firm has specialized in consumer, energy, privacy, housing and human services, on behalf of non-profits and public interest organizations, and he has been involved in California energy issues on behalf of consumers.

Mark Ibele is Principal Consultant on Taxation and Revenue with the California State Assembly, Committee on Budget. Prior to joining legislative staff in 2010, he was Staff Director of the Commission on the 21st Century Economy, established by the Governor's Office in 2010 to examine California's tax system and propose policy alternatives. Prior to his career with the State of California, Ibele held positions related to taxation and public finance at the U.S. Treasury Department, the Service Employees International Union, and in the investment banking field.

Annette Nellen, an attorney and CPA, is a professor in and director of San José State University’s Masters of Science in Taxation (MST) program. Prior to joining SJSU in 1990, Nellen was with Ernst & Young and the IRS. As a frequent speaker and author on tax policy and reform, Nellen has also testified before the California state legislature and Congress.

Learn more about the Taxation & Fiscal Policy topic.