Many communities struggling with a divisive issue will schedule a town meeting to try to find a solution that all sides can accept. But typically, many people want to air their opinions, and the issue may be so controversial that the opposing camps have nowhere near enough time to iron out their differences. Even if the meeting breaks into small groups and facilitators help some of those groups find common ground, everyone else at the meeting may have little interest in a proposal they had no hand in developing.
Yet, a town meeting can be a golden opportunity to resolve a tough issue, if everyone attending can choose a spokesperson who shares their particular outlook on the matter. These representatives can then meet to negotiate a solution. If they can reach an agreement that satisfies them, each representative will then be in the best possible position to explain to the people he or she represents — in their own terms — exactly how the agreement meets their concerns better than the other options available. If all groups accept the proposal, it is likely to be seen as legitimate in the eyes of the whole community.
The key to this process is for:
The most effective way to do all of the above is to use an election process called “personally accountable representation” (PAR).
It begins with the attendees at the town meeting openly discussing the issue, so everyone can decide which aspects matter to them most.
The organizers of the meeting then ask candidates for a negotiating committee to step forward. Each candidate is given a few minutes to explain his or her point of view.
Everyone at the meeting then fills out a preferential ballot, which is designed to group like-minded citizens around their most appropriate representative. It is a more elaborate election process than most people are used to, but it aligns the interests of each representative with his constituents as closely as possible. That, in turn, gives constituents a compelling reason to trust their representative, so that when he or she comes back with a proposal, they will give it serious consideration.
This process of aligning interests — at a town meeting with hundreds of people whose views are all over the lot — can be visualized in the following way: Imagine that each candidate for the negotiating committee goes to a different part of the room. Every person at the meeting can then be asked to gather around the candidate they prefer. In effect, the interest groups form around the candidates who step forward. However, it would be impractical for the committee to be of unlimited size with everyone who runs getting a seat. So, if any candidate has very few supporters, he can be asked to step down, and his supporters asked to move to their second choice. Then, the next candidate with very few supporters can step down and her backers can move to their next choice. This process can be repeated until the committee is a reasonable size or all of the candidates remaining have a minimum threshold of support.
In a real meeting, some people may not want to publicly disclose their preferences. So, the same result can be achieved with a preferential ballot, on which each voter lists, in order, the candidates they prefer. As in the scenario above, when the ballots are counted, the lowest-drawing candidates are eliminated one-by-one, and the votes for them redistributed to their backers' next choices. If a voter's first choice gets enough support to win a seat, that person becomes their representative. If not, they get their second choice; and so on. (The exact election procedure is described in detail later in this document.) When the election is over, everyone at the meeting will have an appropriate representative.
Each representative then meets with his or her constituents to discuss strategy and establish ways of staying in touch while the negotiations progress.
The representatives then hold a series of negotiating sessions to try to resolve the issue.
When the representatives have accomplished as much as they think is possible, they can ask to reconvene the town meeting. If they fell short of an agreement, each representative can meet with his or her constituents to explain why and explore what to do next. If the representatives reached an agreement, each one can seek his or her constituents' support for the measure, and answer any questions.
The whole meeting then gathers to discuss the proposal and vote on whether to accept it.
This process is designed to turn a critical issue that is dividing a community into an outcome that serves the whole community.