America in One Room: Democratic Reform — Using New Technology for Deliberation

• In Event: Innovating for Democracy: New Technologies, New Roles

Abstract

America in One Room: Democratic Reform was a national experiment in deliberation by a sample of 600 deliberators and a comparable control group selected by NORC at the University of Chicago. It focused on 76 proposals for reform gathered from across the political spectrum and vetted by a non-partisan advisory committee. The project employed an AI assisted moderator for the sixty small groups who engaged in video based discussion for a long weekend. The moderator platform replaced human moderators in the Deliberative Poll model and received superb evaluations from the participants. There were striking changes of opinion on electoral reforms such as Ranked Choice Voting and on all the essential mechanics of voter registration, the counting of votes and non-partisan administration of elections. On the issues of extreme partisan polarization in this era when election results are contested there were large de-polarizing movements by both Republicans and Democrats on the ways democracy could be protected and strengthened for universal inclusion and bi-partisan confidence in election results. This paper attempts to explain these large changes of opinion and shows how the automated moderator can be used with large, representative samples to overcome our seemingly intractable divisions.

Authors

• James S. Fishkin, Stanford University

• Larry Diamond, Stanford University

• Alice Siu, Stanford University

• Valentin Bolotnyy, Hoover Institution

• Joshua Yoshio Lerner, NORC at the University of Chicago

• Norman Bradburn, University of Chicago