The following is from an article is based on the paper “Assessing the electoral impact of the 2010 Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review,” co-authored with Katherine Knobloch, Justin Reedy, Mark Henkels, and Kathy Cramer in American Politics Research. The article is written by John Gastil, professor in Communication Arts & Sciences and senior scholar at the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University. Continue reading that article here: blogs.lse.ac.uk

Citizens in many US states practice direct democracy through voting on statewide ballot measures. But do voters actually have all the information they need to make judgments about a measure’s likely effects? In 2011, Oregon adopted a Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) process, where randomly-selected citizen review boards evaluate ballot proposals to improve their fellow voters’ decision-making. In new research, John Gastil finds that reading one such statement on proposed criminal justice legislation increased voters’ opposition to the measure, though it did not prevent its passage.

From Brexit in the UK to innumerable controversial initiatives on abortion rights, tax policy, and everything imaginable in the US, recent experiences with direct democracy have given many observers pause. I do not take a position in this debate, but I can share recent findings about the efficacy of one attempt to improve such elections.

Read more here. Also, here is a video from Healthy Democracy Oregon about the initiative with two of its biggest advocates Ned Crosby and Pat Benn.