Nice piece in the Independent

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Nice piece in the Independent

15.01.2010 // by Guy Aitchison

Andreas Whittam Smith has a fabulous write up of last weekend's Deliberative Poll in today's Independent. This kind of process, he argues, could hold the key to re-connecting with voters:

A remarkable political event, organised by POWER2010, took place in London over the weekend. Nearly 200 people, representative of the social mix of the country, came together for two days to engage in a "deliberative poll". Their task was to consider and to rank in order of preference desirable reforms in the way that Britain is run. Their conclusions were surprising, as I shall describe. Unfortunately the occasion received little coverage in the media.
The Independent was a pioneer in the use of deliberative polling. In 1994 the newspaper, in partnership with Channel Four, organised a series of deliberations on the issues of the day. Since then more than 50 Deliberative Polls have taken place across the world. They have been used to elect candidates in primaries in Greece. And they have been employed in China, Brazil, Texas, Poland, Italy, Canada and Argentina to recommend policies.

The idea was originally conceived by James Fishkin, who runs the Centre for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University in the US. He had asked himself how in a perfect world he would change the way the American political parties used "primary" elections to choose candidates. He wanted a way of including everybody in conditions where voters are motivated to think deeply about the issues. How could political equality and deliberation be obtained at one sitting?

Read the column in full here.