In this dark American moment, California has turned on a small democratic light.
It’s called Engaged California. It’s an online, nonpartisan tool for Californians to deliberate with one another and engage their government.
When you sign up with your email, pledge to behave with civility, and answer questions about your thoughts on the L.A. fires, it might feel like just another online survey. But it is a big deal. Because the U.S., and California, have done little to encourage deliberative democracy, especially online.
Which means that Engaged California could launch a new era in which everyday people determine public policy themselves.
Before I continue, I should disclose that, since last year, I’ve been an unpaid advisor to the Engaged California.
My role was to join Zoom calls, ask questions, connect my fellow advisors and state workers designing the tool to world experts in digital and deliberative democracy.
I confess that, even while advising the project, I didn’t think it would ever be used by the public. I was pessimistic even though, as an advisor, I was working with very smart people at the Carnegie Endowment’s California program and at the Berggruen Institute, where I’m a fellow in the Renovating Democracy program.
My profound pessimism was based on two decades of personal failure. Since 2006, I’ve written columns and convened events to convince Californians to adopt the best democratic practices and innovations from around the world. Many of the tools I’ve encountered — from Tokyo to Munich — allow students to participate in, deliberate on, or directly decide difficult questions, often online.
Such tools should have been popular here in California, which struggles with governance but is a global leader in digital commerce. But local and state governments ignored my suggestions. So, I concluded that Californians were too arrogant and contented to embrace novel democratic process.
Last month, California proved me wrong — by debuting Engaged California.
How did it happen? My fellow advisors (led by Audrey Tang of Taiwan) were brilliant. The state of the world’s democracies created a sense of urgency.
But the real revelations were the skill and determined of the staff of the state’s Office of Data and Innovation. These state workers absorbed as much about deliberative democracy in six months as I managed in a decade of reporting. And they were patient as government higher-ups moved around deadlines, and changed the subject of the first deliberation in January, from social media rules for the young to the L.A. fires.
The March launch of Engaged California was historic. California is the first state to make such a digital, deliberative tool available. It’s also the largest jurisdiction in the world to do so. Engaged California is still a small pilot, but more than 7,000 people have signed up for it.
I’m more hopeful for what might come next. Planning for the tool’s future phases is still in its early stages. I’m hoping that Engaged California will be used to create small-group meetings or a full-scale citizens assembly, with Californians chosen by lot to deliberate on specific questions. Conceivably, such an assembly could produce recommendations that could be implemented, perhaps by regulation, law, or even ballot measure.
There’s no guarantee that these future phases will happen. And this project has another thorny challenge. Engaged California wouldn’t be happening now without the support of Gov. Gavin Newsom — who wrote a book about such democratic models. But Engaged California won’t survive as a project of one politician.
For Engaged California to succeed, you and I will have to participate in it, give feedback, and urge that it develop in response to such input. Around the world, the democratic tools that last — like Madrid’s CONSUL or Barcelona’s Decidim — are monitored closely by everyday citizens.
This little democratic light of ours will keep shining only if we overcome today’s dark pessimism and embrace such democratic tools as our own.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Mathews: The new tool called Engaged California