Are you still making up your mind on Question 4, the ballot
question on marijuana legalization? If so, there’s a new source of
information that may be of interest to you.
It’s called the Citizens’ Statement on Question 4 and it’s the result of an innovative approach called Citizens’ Initiative Review. CIR has been used for a number of years in Oregon, where voters have found it helpful in sorting through complicated ballot questions.
Here’s how it works:
A panel of citizens representative of the voting population comes
together for four days of intensive deliberations on a ballot question.
They hear from the campaigns pro and con, pose questions to independent
policy experts, and deliberate among themselves, drawing on their
different backgrounds and viewpoints.
In the end, they produce the Citizens’ Statement, a summary of the key facts they feel voters would want to know about the ballot question as well as the strongest and most credible arguments for and against. This is a voter education effort driven by voters themselves, working on behalf of their fellow voters.
The Citizens’ Statement is very different from the usual information on ballot questions. Unlike the highly partisan information from the campaigns in mailers and TV ads, the Statement doesn’t take a position pro or con. It presents information on both sides that the citizen panelists believe other voters would want to have. It’s also different from the information in the red voter guide that the Secretary of State sends to all voters. It’s short, written in lay language and reflects the perspectives of regular citizens, not government lawyers.
We are currently doing a CIR pilot in Massachusetts, using Question 4 as the test case. This is a nongovernmental project organized by my office, the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University and Healthy Democracy, the organization that pioneered CIR in Oregon. The 20 citizen panelists were drawn from a random sample of 10,000 Massachusetts voters and balanced to reflect the state’s voting population in terms of age, gender, party affiliation, race and ethnicity, place of residence, and level of education.
At the end of August, they came together for four days at the Atrium School here in Watertown. They studied written materials submitted by the campaigns for and against Question 4 and heard live presentations from campaign representatives. They also had an opportunity to pose questions to independent experts on substance use, public health, regulation of industries, criminal justice, law enforcement and Colorado’s experiences since it legalized marijuana in 2014.
Then they spent the better part of two days discussing and writing their Citizens’ Statement. It was a remarkable and inspiring thing to see: 20 people who had never met before working collaboratively — a 91 year-old great grandmother from Springfield alongside a 20-year-old college student from Brockton — to produce a statement about the many issues related to marijuana legalization. Many of the citizen panelists afterwards described it as the most meaningful, empowering political experience of their lives.
The Citizens’ Statement on Question 4 is available on the project website: CIRMass2016.org. You can also find materials there on how the citizen panelists were selected and other aspects of the CIR process.
An independent research team out of Penn State University is holding focus groups with voters across the state to hear whether they find Citizens’ Statement useful. I invite you to look at the Statement and give your feedback too. You can send your comments to me at jonathan.hecht@mahouse.gov or call my office at 617-722-2140. In light of what we learn, we will consider whether to try to make CIR a regular part of Massachusetts elections.
It’s called the Citizens’ Statement on Question 4 and it’s the result of an innovative approach called Citizens’ Initiative Review. CIR has been used for a number of years in Oregon, where voters have found it helpful in sorting through complicated ballot questions.
Here’s how it works:
In the end, they produce the Citizens’ Statement, a summary of the key facts they feel voters would want to know about the ballot question as well as the strongest and most credible arguments for and against. This is a voter education effort driven by voters themselves, working on behalf of their fellow voters.
The Citizens’ Statement is very different from the usual information on ballot questions. Unlike the highly partisan information from the campaigns in mailers and TV ads, the Statement doesn’t take a position pro or con. It presents information on both sides that the citizen panelists believe other voters would want to have. It’s also different from the information in the red voter guide that the Secretary of State sends to all voters. It’s short, written in lay language and reflects the perspectives of regular citizens, not government lawyers.
We are currently doing a CIR pilot in Massachusetts, using Question 4 as the test case. This is a nongovernmental project organized by my office, the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University and Healthy Democracy, the organization that pioneered CIR in Oregon. The 20 citizen panelists were drawn from a random sample of 10,000 Massachusetts voters and balanced to reflect the state’s voting population in terms of age, gender, party affiliation, race and ethnicity, place of residence, and level of education.
At the end of August, they came together for four days at the Atrium School here in Watertown. They studied written materials submitted by the campaigns for and against Question 4 and heard live presentations from campaign representatives. They also had an opportunity to pose questions to independent experts on substance use, public health, regulation of industries, criminal justice, law enforcement and Colorado’s experiences since it legalized marijuana in 2014.
Then they spent the better part of two days discussing and writing their Citizens’ Statement. It was a remarkable and inspiring thing to see: 20 people who had never met before working collaboratively — a 91 year-old great grandmother from Springfield alongside a 20-year-old college student from Brockton — to produce a statement about the many issues related to marijuana legalization. Many of the citizen panelists afterwards described it as the most meaningful, empowering political experience of their lives.
The Citizens’ Statement on Question 4 is available on the project website: CIRMass2016.org. You can also find materials there on how the citizen panelists were selected and other aspects of the CIR process.
An independent research team out of Penn State University is holding focus groups with voters across the state to hear whether they find Citizens’ Statement useful. I invite you to look at the Statement and give your feedback too. You can send your comments to me at jonathan.hecht@mahouse.gov or call my office at 617-722-2140. In light of what we learn, we will consider whether to try to make CIR a regular part of Massachusetts elections.
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