A New Kind of Town Meeting

Planning an Interactive Town Meeting

Linking Citizens with Community Organizations

The Efficient Frontier

How to 
Reach Us

The Civic Engagement Project

Democracy 2000 Home Page

How can a community solve divisive issues that have stymied elected officials? Some towns and cities create an ad hoc body of local citizens in the belief that a small, dedicated group of people may be able to resolve issues that elected officials find too hot to handle. These “community forums” usually consist of volunteers or representatives appointed by specific interest groups.

But what about the rest of the community? What about citizens who do not identify with any of the most prominent groups? Those citizens may comprise a majority of the town or city. In that case, an ad hoc forum of a few select citizens may have little standing with most local residents. So, if the forum develops a proposal, it may be ignored. After all, to support a proposal, most people need to feel that it addresses their concerns, that they played some role in developing it.

With that in mind, Democracy 2000 has a developed a process that gives the maximum number of citizens a spokesperson, someone they trust to speak for them on the issues at hand, someone who will keep them informed of his or her efforts to resolve those issues. This process is called “Interactive Representation"  (IR). A forum that uses IR can engage all segments of the community, so, it is more likely to develop solutions that the whole community will support.

To create an IR forum, the first step is to engage all local residents by distributing a written survey throughout the community. The survey asks respondents to identify which community issues concern them most and to identify their stands on those issues. Respondents are also asked (but not required) to put their names and addresses on the survey form so the organizers can stay in touch with them throughout the process. 

The survey responses are compiled to determine which issues are most prominent.

Then, the organizers recruit candidates to serve on the forum. Ideally, the candidates will cover the community’s spectrum of social, economic and political views. Each candidate is asked to write a statement of his or her priorities.

The candidates' statements, together with a ballot, are mailed to all survey respondents.

To ensure that every participant is represented as accurately as possible, each one is asked to list the candidates they prefer, in order (1, 2, 3, etc.). The ballots are counted in such a way that the maximum number of citizens get their first choice of a representative, most of the rest get their second choice, and most of the rest get their third choice. (For an explanation of how ballots are counted, see the box on the next page.)

Respondents are also asked (but not required) to put their names and addresses on their ballots so that each elected representative can be told who his or her constituents are. Then, each representative can communicate with his or her constituents regularly by mail or other means.

With this method, each representative gets a constituency that backs his or her agenda. To accomplish any of that agenda, each representative has to negotiate with other forum members. So, whenever the forum meets, facilitators are made available. To reach agreements, the members will need to explore new options and probably need to modify their original positions. Since each representative has his or her constituents’ names and addresses, he can write to explain to them  in their own terms how, to reach any of their goals, he had to negotiate with other segments of the community. Each representative can also explain how any resulting agreement achieves more of his constituents’ objectives than was available by other means

Organized in this way, the representatives are more likely to find solutions that the entire community can support.

Although the results of an IR forum are not binding on the local government, solutions that all segments of the community support can stimulate elected officials to act on issues that once seemed irreconcilable.

• An IR forum is designed to maximize the number of community residents who get a spokesperson who accurately reflects their concerns.

For more information about electing IR Community Forums, email: dem2000@igc.org