From The Los Angeles Times: . . . By contrast, the review process for citizen ballot measures is woefully inadequate and sometimes leads to the passage of initiatives that don’t stand up to legal scrutiny. That’s what happened with Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage, and Proposition 187, which limited public services to immigrants who …
The Portland metro area is hosting its first-ever Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR), facilitated by Healthy Democracy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit based in Portland. Up for review: the Metro Region Affordable Housing Bond Measure. A cross-section of voters – who are randomly selected to match the demographics of the metro region in key areas such as political affiliation, …
The 2018 Portland Metro Area CIR is Starting Today! (And Running Aug. 23-26) Read More »
The Portland metro area is hosting its first-ever Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR), facilitated by Healthy Democracy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit based in Portland. Up for review: the Metro Region Affordable Housing Bond Measure. A cross-section of voters – who are randomly selected to match the demographics of the metro region in key areas such as political affiliation, …
PORTLAND, Ore. — Healthy Democracy, a nonprofit nonpartisan organization that pioneered the Citizens’ Initiative Review, will be holding a public event to randomly select a group of registered voters from Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties to serve on a review panel to examine the Metro Region Affordable Housing Bond Measure that voters will be asked to vote …
Citizen Panel to be Selected to Review Metro Region Affordable Housing Bond Measure Read More »
Got This Letter in Your Mail? You’ve won the democracy lottery! If you received the letter, you have a chance to be part of a Citizens’ Initiative Review. If you reply and are randomly selected, you will: Spend four days reviewing a measure on the November ballot, as part of a 20-person citizen panel Have …
Into the Central Oregon barn walked students with purple hair, red Chuck Taylor high tops, and silver nose rings. They were gay and straight, male and female; each of them young, and all of them environmental studies majors from Lewis and Clark College in Portland.
Greeting them were farmers in Oregon State baseball caps and ranchers with silver hair beneath cowboy hats, and small timber operators with the scars to prove it. Some were young, but most were less young, and all had lived their lives and were making their living on the soil of the small Crook County community of Powell Butte.
From May 21st to 25th, 10th-grade students at La Follette High School in Madison will have the opportunity to dive deeper into a hotly debated current issue: whether the Madison School Board should renew its contract for educational resource officers (EROs) at district high schools.
Join us 9am-3:30pm, April 14th, 2018 for “Bringing Participatory Budgeting to the Portland Region”, a one-day community forum to learn from PB innovators with experience in Seattle, Oakland, and Boston and discuss the possibilities for our communities.
Executive Director Robin Teater reviews our accomplishments in 2017 and looks ahead to the new year.
HD’s summer 2017 Nevins Fellow, Andy Puthenpurayil, argues that one often-distorted category of ballot measures – those dealing with ‘three strikes’ laws and other criminal justice matters – could particularly benefit from the clarity of a CIR-style review.
Program Director Jessie Conover writes a few goodbyes on her leaving Healthy Democracy and the world of deliberative democracy.
Robin Teater writes a goodbye to our beloved program director, Jessie Conover.
In a talk at the Frontiers of Democracy conference in Boston, Ashley Trim calls for greater political inclusiveness within universities and the deliberative democracy community.
Jessie Conover responds to recent articles calling for less public participation in our democracy.
Linn Davis makes the case for urban thinker Jane Jacobs as a grandmother of modern public engagement.
Robin Teater and Linn Davis recap the 2017 Elevate Engagement conference.
Wendy Willis reviews our first Democracy Salon on the topic of trust and journalism. The discussion, she writes, surfaced a number of important questions: “What is the appropriate balance between trust and skepticism?” “How do we foster belonging in a mass society?” and, more succinctly, “What the hell is going on?”
Jessie Conover reviews #Republic, the inspiration for our series on cultivating a healthy and balanced news diet.
Jessie Conover shares her own journey to a more healthy and balanced news diet, through a series of simple steps.
Jessie Conover discusses the need for a healthy and balanced news diet to support a healthy democracy, including a taxonomy of news “food groups.”
From WWLP 22 News: BOSTON (WWLP) – State lawmakers are working to make voting easier on election day. Ballot questions can be confusing, sometimes making it unclear what your ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote actually means. State lawmakers have a proposal that could change where your information comes from. More than 50 state lawmakers support a bill …
Massachusetts: State lawmakers working to make ballot questions more clear to voters Read More »
Program Director Jessie Conover offers tips for nonpartisan organizations in a time of “existential threats to our democracy”.
For the second time, the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review has been named a Top 10 Innovations in American Government recipient by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Linn Davis completes his post on sociologist Sherry Turkle’s case for conversation with a review of HD’s best ideas for strengthening our skills for political dialogue.
From Fox & Hounds: Californians have a love-hate relationship with the Initiative process. Recent surveys by PPIC show that two-thirds of voters are satisfied with the initiative process even though a majority think that special interests have too much control and an even larger majority think the wording of initiatives is “often too complicated and …
A Manageable Improvement to the State Initiative Process? Read More »
