Professor Dr. John Gastil of Penn State University has posted The Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review, at the Democracy Fund Blog.
The post summarizes the results of the 2012 Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review, “which convene[d] a group of average citizens together to evaluate ballot measures and share their recommendations with the voting public.”
Key findings:
- A majority of Oregon voters were aware of the CIR.
- Roughly two-thirds of those who read the CIR Statements found them helpful when deciding how to vote.
- Those who read a CIR Statement learned more about the ballot measures than those who read other portions of the official Voter’s Guide. [...]
The complete evaluation report described in the post is: Katherine R. Knobloch, John Gastil, Robert Richards, and Traci Feller. (2012). Evaluation Report on the 2012 Citizens’ Initiative Reviews for the Oregon CIR Commission. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University.
For more details, please see Professor Gastil’s complete post.
Click here for more information on the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review, at Participedia.
Disclosure: Professor Gastil is my Ph.D. advisor, and I contributed to the evaluation report on the 2012 Oregon CIR and the voter survey discussed in the post, and to the Participedia article on the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review linked above.
HT @jgastil
Tags: Ballot initiatives, Citizens' Initiative Review, Citizens' legal communication about ballot initiative, Citizens' participation in initiative process, Citizens' participation in lawmaking, Citizens' participation in legislative process, Deliberative democracy, Democracy Fund Blog, Democratic deliberation, Direct democracy communication systems, Direct democracy information systems, Evaluation Report on the 2012 Citizens' Initiative Reviews for the Oregon CIR Commission, John Gastil, Katherine Knobloch, Katherine R. Knobloch, Legal deliberation, Legislative communication, Legislative deliberation, Legislative information systems, Oregon Citizens' Initiative Review, Traci Feller
