Three ways to empower everyday people
Our process uses (and re-uses) three core citizen-powered process ingredients, each with its own strengths. Civic assemblies are best for representative deliberation, open forums for participation, and ballot measures for voter authority.
Civic Assemblies
Selected by democratic lotteries, these jury-like bodies will think, feel, reason, and act like Colorado: rural and urban, east to west, all parties, all walks of life. They process public input, hear from experts on every side, deliberate, and decide together.
Open Forums
Online or in-person — every Coloradan can share ideas, concerns, and proposals. People who want to go deep can join a study group at a local library. Others can weigh in from a keyboard — upvoting, commenting, suggesting alternatives.
Ballot Measures
The voting public decides. Unlike standard ballot initiatives, where private interests buy signatures and leave voters confused, every measure produced by this system will have undergone extensive deliberation by a highly representative body. Written by the people, for the people.
How it works
Our process combines the ingredients above in ways that highlight the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses of each: forum ideas get serious attention, assemblies have formal proposal power, and the ballot measures that voters consider emerge from deep public scrutiny.
Everyday Coloradans frame the rules and the topic
One assembly meets to frame process rules to ensure independence and hone healthy democratic procedures. A second assembly determines the topic question that the policy assembly will work to answer, considering topics suggested in an open forum.
Process and agenda decisions, though almost always decided by organizers, should be under citizen control and free from undue influence.
Everyday Coloradans gather, learn, deliberate, and draft
An open forum invites topic input. Participants deeply study it and then solicit testimony from people with relevant experience and diverse perspectives. They work through the hard issues, weighing options not for hours or days, but for over four months. They integrate feedback from a forum inviting citizens to review their proposals. They work closely with legislative lawyers drafting the policy and consult iteratively with government officials to ensure a robust implementation path. They produce a citizens' bill.
Thoughtful, refined legislation requires time and resources; most civic assemblies get too little of both.
Either the legislature enacts, or everyday Coloradans vote
The proposal goes to the legislature for an up-or-down vote. No amendments, no buried-in-committee. If the bill is not passed by the deadline, it goes directly to Colorado voters on the next statewide ballot, bypassing signature requirements.
Most civic assemblies are advisory; politicians are free to ignore them. These bills have teeth — if politicians ignore them, the voters decide.