When Martians Land, Pigs Fly, and Americans Reach Consensus
Civic Genius & Citizen Panel Forums
March 23, 2021
We’ve all seen and heard the sad decline of civil discussions at congressional town hall forums over the past decade or two. The anger, the shouting, the gotcha questions. Not to mention generous amounts of obfuscation from congressional representatives as well.
The result being that even before COVID, many members of Congress and other elected officials began to abandon town halls all together. And, as a result, it seemed like another important element of civil society and representative democracy would fade into history.
But the non-profit, non-partisan group Civic Genius sensed opportunity where others just heard shouting. One of several deliberative democracy efforts, Civic Genius, in partnership with the survey group Voice of the People, holds surprisingly civil and productive “Citizen Panel” forums, where participants deliberate and present bipartisan recommendations to their district’s Congressional Representative. In the process, the group aims to revive the Congressional town hall tradition and give civil society a shot in the arm.
This episode features interviews with Civic Genius’s Executive Director, Jillian Youngblood, who leads the Citizen Panel effort, as well as Dr. Steve Kull of Voice of the People, the survey group facilitating selection and orientation of citizens on topics as tricky and timely as police reform and immigration, among others.
Jillian Youngblood says a bit of structure and preparation goes a long way in creating a more civil environment. While Dr. Steve Kull, based on his decades of research, finds that the average citizen is naturally open-minded and tolerant of opposing viewpoints. But the power of political parties and media exaggerate the degree of hyperpartisanship among us.
To date, Civic Genius has held Citizen Panels with five Congressional members, with two more on the current calendar. Democratic Congresswoman Susan Wild of Pennsylvania discussed government reform at her Citizens Panel while Republican Congressman (and former FBI agent) Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania discussed police reform. Both Youngblood and Kull hope the Citizen Panel model will be formalized within the House of Representatives and possibly extended to Senators and their constituents as well.
Tune into Episode Two (Season Two) of the Purple Principle, “When Martians Land, Pigs Fly, and Americans Reach Consensus,” for a refreshing earful of civility. And please visit our website for info on past and future episodes, as well as access to our newsletter, The Purple Principle in Print.
Original Music by Ryan Adair Rooney.
Transcript
Robert Pease (host)
So much of U.S. governance relies on the town hall tradition for local decisions and citizen feedback with elected representatives. You’re listening to the Purple Principle, I’m Robert Pease.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
And I’m Emily Crocetti. But in our polarized times, even before COVID, the town hall style meetings of elected officials, and especially members of Congress, were so often so disruptive and so dysfunctional.
Robert Pease (host)
The result being that a huge number of elected representatives cut back on town halls or stopped having them all together.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
But the nonprofit, nonpartisan group Civic Genius is trying to bring civility and common cause back to Congressional town hall meetings. So far, their Citizen Panels do have a very different tone.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
A bipartisan group of congressional Representatives have attended these panels so far, including Republican Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Democrat Jamie Raskin of Maryland. These and other congress members have noticed the difference as well.
Robert Pease (host)
Join us today on the Purple Principle as we speak with the Executive Director of Civic Genius, Jillian Youngblood, on the surprising overlap among Americans across the spectrum on a great many issues.
Jillian Youngblood
I think at this point there are more than 150 specific policy proposals where majorities of Democrats and Republicans agree, which is absolutely wild.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
We’ll also speak with Dr. Steven Kull of Voice of the People. His survey group identifies participants for these Citizen Panels and prepares briefing materials to help shape a healthy debate.
Steven Kull
There is this tendency to think that people are fundamentally polarized. But in fact, they kind of naturally see both sides.
Robert Pease (host)
Let's start by talking with Jillian Youngblood on the origins of her group, Civic Genius, and the idea of holding Citizen Panels.
Jillian Youngblood
We've been around since 2017, is officially when the organization started. The genesis of it actually is that our founder, a guy named Howard Konar, who's a Rochester-based philanthropist, just kind of ruing the degradation of civic life and the nastiness we've started to see these last couple of years that's really come to a head. He wrote a book called Common Ground, which used to be the name of our organization, where he just laid out a couple of places where I think we could get something done. Like, remember when we almost solved the national debt, but we didn't? Remember when we almost had a comprehensive immigration deal, but then we didn't?
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
And so when did the idea of the Citizens Panel first originate?
Jillian Youngblood
We work on the Citizen Panel initiative with another non-partisan group called Voice of the People. And that group is run by a political psychologist whose life's work is demonstrating that people have a lot more in common than they think they do on policy. So I think when you look at polarization, probably one of the greatest dangers facing our country right now, a lot of that is really issues of identities and power struggles kind of coming up against each other. But Voice of the People runs these really interesting surveys called policy-making simulations. People do them online, they take 20 or 30 minutes, and you get some education on a topic. We've done campaign finance reform, immigration, police reform, criminal justice. You then read these really well-crafted pro and con statements on all these different policy proposals. Those pro and con statements are vetted with experts who are proponents and opponents of whatever the proposal is, so they're really good faith arguments for and against these different ideas. You go through that whole process and then you tell us on a scale of 1 to 10, how do you feel about these different proposals? So Voice of the People fields those nationally and gets this really interesting data. When we look at that data, we want to bring this to some forum where A) people can see it and realize that all this common ground exists and B) that they can have a conversation directly with their elected official about it. So that's how the initiative was born.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
And after going through several hours of tape of the Citizen Panels, it is kind of striking and heartening to hear people discussing important complex issues without the usual kicking and screaming.
Robert Pease (host)
Like a breath of fresh depolarized air. But Jillian’s own background is a big factor here. After all, with the harsh experiences congress members have had with town halls, it can’t be easy convincing them to meet with constituents in a forum controlled by an outside group.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
Jillian herself worked for the Bloomberg administration in New York City – not entirely occupied by shy people – and she is also a former Capitol Hill staffer from Georgia, who has attended a lot of town hall meetings as well.
Jillian Youngblood
The common thread here for me is that I just have experience, both professional and life experience, talking to a lot of different kinds of people. I grew up in a conservative community in the South. I'm from Georgia. The congressional district I grew up in was represented at the time by Newt Gingrich, the sort of divisive, I guess we'll say, Speaker of the House in the mid to late nineties. That area has changed a lot. Metro Atlanta just helped elect two Democratic Senators. But when I grew up there, it was a conservative southern Baptist community almost exclusively. There are a lot of Trump voters in my family, both in 2016 and 2020. I moved to New York City to go to college. So my very early political engagement was in a very blue place, and I always felt a little bit politically homeless. Like I just kind of wanted to explain to my conservative southern Baptist high school friends and my liberal, very diverse friends in New York what the other side was thinking in a way that didn't require people to leave their values at the door, but could at least at least provide some perspective. If you live in New York City and you don't understand why anyone would ever own a gun, I can say, oh, I grew up in a place where a bunch of people own guns – and guns are tied to all kinds of problems, but also I know a lot of responsible gun owners – that kind of thing. I think those are conversations you don’t necessarily get to have.
Robert Pease (host)
That is great background for this kind of work. And it reminds us of several Season One guests working to bridge the partisan divide, such as Stephen Hawkins of the research group More in Common. They published an important study on America’s hidden political tribes and coined the term the “exhausted American majority.”
Stephens Hawkins (previously recorded audio)
So I found that in about a 10 year span, I had swung fully from a missionary, a Christian missionary style all the way over to a progressive or liberal missionary organization. And so I'm now in a place where I've taken a step back from both of those two worlds and I'm really interested in how we can weave them back together and how we might come back together as a society, as audacious as that sounds. It's a very compelling mission for me personally because I have a lot of affection, a lot of respect, and a lot of friendships and relationships more generally in both worlds.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
But we should also say this is not our first episode on the topic of Congressional town halls.
Robert Pease (host)
That’s right. In Episode 7 of our first season, we learned about the bipartisan congressional town halls held by centrist Democrat Jason Altmire with the centrist Republican next door.
Jason Altmire (previously recorded audio)
We invited all of our constituents jointly and we got a great mix. We had a wonderful discussion, no theatrics that you see at these partisan town hall meetings, with the “gotcha” questions and people yelling and screaming. None of that happened; it was a completely civil discussion about the issues. And we had a great experience.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
Spoiler alert, those bipartisan town halls were shut down by the Congressional leaders of both parties.
Robert Pease (host)
The Civic Genius panels also strive for bipartisanship, but with a different approach. There’s a selection process for the attendees, and some important prep work led by Dr. Steve Kull at Voice of the People.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
He’s a University of Maryland professor of Political Psychology with decades of polling experience in the U.S. and internationally.
Steven Kull
The Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland is the entity that does the active recruitment and development of the survey and administering of it. Let me give the background: for years now we’ve been doing this with large national samples and we've done dozens of these. And overall more than 80,000 people have participated online in these processes nationally. Now, what we've been doing more recently with the Citizen Panel project is that we go into a specific congressional district and we work this out with the member of Congress. And we do this kind of survey in the district. And then we invite people who have participated in the survey to come to an event. We call it a Citizen Panel forum, we break into small groups and have discussions about the issues and so on, so they can kind of get a richer sense of what other people think and what the issues are. And then we bring the member in and we have a discussion. People in the group elaborate more on how they're thinking about the issues, and then the member responds. And then there's a real discussion. It's not like a town hall meeting where people are yelling my side, my side; they're thinking together and they're thinking with the member. You could call it a deliberative environment and it happens spontaneously. You don't have to tell people to do it. it's not really even that hard to get people into that state of mind if you give them the right information.
Robert Pease (host)
You've been doing this for a while. And usually, you know, methodologies are refined. Has your method changed at all with time?
Steven Kull
We've been working on this for well over a decade at the Program for Public Consultation, and yes, we refined it, but there is a basic design, which is that we take an issue that is in play. Often it's a piece of legislation in Congress, but it can also be an issue with the executive branch, and we boil down or pull out the key, or what we call choice, points. These are choices that members of Congress are going to be making. Now, they may be making overall a choice about the bill, but we pull out the specific components of the bill. And then we give people a briefing on the issue. Then we present them arguments, pro and con, and they evaluate each argument independently. And then ultimately they make the recommendation on that choice point.
Robert Pease (host)
A lot of our listeners are independents or unaffiliated voters and what some states call nonpartisans. Sometimes it's not so easy to identify them as it is for Republicans and Democrats. So how do you solve that problem?
Steven Kull
Well, we ask them about their partisan affiliation using very standard language. And then we make sure that the sample is representative of the district in terms of partisan affiliation, as well as other demographics, like gender, education, income, race, and so on. And we're particularly interested in seeing what are those areas? What are those positions, where there is an overlap? In the views of Republicans and Democrats, it turns out there's actually quite a bit. We tend to think of Republicans and Democrats as being very crystallized types of people. Now, if you ask people to place themselves on a spectrum, say from left to right, in Congress you would have a strong cluster on the left and a big cluster on the right. And not that many people in the middle. We call that a U-shaped curve. But if you take the public and you ask them to position themselves on that spectrum, you have just the opposite. You have a big bulge in the middle. Now that doesn't mean that people are just simply in the middle. It's that they're saying, well I think the values on both sides are at least to some extent important. And that's where people most naturally come from and they have to get pushed and harangued and harassed to get over on one side and to suppress their concerns about the values that are expressed on the other side. It’s not a natural state. There is this tendency to think that people are fundamentally polarized and you have to really work to get them to see outside their scope. But in fact, they kind of naturally see both sides and you actually have to work to get them into those crisp categories.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
That was Professor Steve Kull of the University of Maryland and the nonprofit Voice of the People. His group works with Jillian Youngblood’s Civic Genius on these more deliberative town hall style meetings.
Robert Pease (host)
And some of the thorny issues covered include immigration, energy, environment, and police reform.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
And after some initial concerns, these Congress members do lean into the opportunity to have real dialogue with constituents, without gotcha questions and heckling and all that partisan stuff.
Robert Pease (host)
That’s an accomplishment in our polarized climate. So we wanted to learn more about the secret sauce at Civic Genius.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
How do they cook up a civil conversation at a time when so much of our politics is not just partisan but downright hostile?
Robert Pease (host)
And it looks like a big part of that is just doing your homework before coming to the event.
Jillian Youngblood
The one thing that happens a lot at our events is people come in having gone through the policy-making simulation. So, you know, whether or not they've already got a strong opinion on a topic, they've gone through this process where they read an argument for something and an argument against something, and people tell us all the time, you know, I think that I mostly am in favor of whatever this policy proposal is, but I do see the other side of it. And some people will say it actually changed my mind, which does happen occasionally. More often people will say, I think I still know how I feel, but I get it a little bit better. And I think that I could compromise on this issue a little bit.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
So what is it about the format of the citizens panel?
Jillian Youngblood
So I think there are a couple of things about the format that make it possible. One, it sounds a little bit silly, but we just lay some ground rules. Political conversations in this country, whether they're in person or online, have gotten really angry and really caustic in a way that I don't think appeals to most people. So I think one is, we just say, listen, this is where we're going to have a civil conversation. We're here to have a thoughtful discussion with each other and with our elected representative. The constituents in this case get to talk first, which I think is really important. So I think this format makes people feel like they're really being heard, which is such a critical way to break through polarization. So people are already in that mindset. And then you have to sit at a table or be in a Zoom room with a bunch of strangers, and people aren't wearing red and blue pins. So you don't know who's who, so it revives this civic experience where everyone needs to start off in a civil way that I don't think people get. I mean, civic life in this country has degraded a lot over the past 50 or so years. So we're trying to kind of revive that where you're meeting some strangers, they're in your community and you don't know who they are. So your inclination is to just be nice, and that's the whole tone of the event. And then the other piece of it is that we have this data. We did, for example, an event on policing and public safety in Pennsylvania. And that was with Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, who's a Republican, he's a former law enforcement officer. He was one of three Republicans who voted for the George Floyd Justice and Policing act. He's got a really interesting perspective on policing. So I think the constituents recognized that right away. There were ten proposals, I believe, that were surveyed for that event. And six of them, we could show that there was common ground between Republicans and Democrats. So six out of ten is pretty good. If you could do six out of every ten proposals on the table, because actually people across the aisle agreed on them, we would get some things done.
Robert Pease (host)
It's interesting. You mentioned that at Fitzpatrick’s Citizens Panel,where a woman of color who was reading the legislation and concerned that Fitzpatrick is in favor of defunding the police, which he's not in favor of. And she says, you know, are you sure you want to do that? And then he explains – the law enforcement officer explains – that that's only in extreme circumstances, but they were both defying, you know, the stereotypes.
Jillian Youngblood
Yeah, I think that happens a lot. And I'm so glad that you pulled out that example actually, because it was really indicative of how these conversations can go. And I think it speaks to what I was saying a little bit earlier about people having an opportunity to step out of their identity boxes. So much of our politics is really performative. And when you can create a place where people are like, I think for example, the police should not use excessive force where it isn't warranted. That's what excessive means, but I do want law enforcement in my neighborhood. And when you can really get into what those specific proposals are, you realize that you're a lot closer than you thought.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
So then would you agree with that in our political environment, it’s mainly the fringes that seem to be stirring the pot?
Jillian Youngblood
I absolutely think the narrative of extreme polarization is really driven by the fringes. You know, when you look at this data, that's the basis for the Citizen Panel initiative, you see something pretty wild, which is that even in very red districts and very blue districts across the country, these 150 plus proposals that we talk about in this initiative, they have majority support in the most conservative and the most liberal districts in the country. So in a very red district, you might not have a majority of Republicans who support, but you have an overall majority and the same thing in a very blue district. That really is pretty hard to refute. I just think that party identity is kind of uninteresting in this conversation. The thing we should be getting at is finding a way to achieve our shared values. And there is abundant evidence that we share enough values that we can find a way to do that.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
So it turns out their secret sauce is not even that secret, or that complicated. First, make sure people are well informed. Second, establish a few ground rules. Third, sprinkle in some appeals to their better nature. And then presto, civil things will happen.
Robert Pease (host)
As of this date, Civic Genius has had five Citizen Town Halls with several more in the works. But civility is not the easiest thing to scale up.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
So we asked both Steve Kull and Jillian Youngblood about their aspirations for the Civic Panels. Could they have a ripple effect beyond just those people in attendance? First, Dr. Kull of Voice of the People.
Steven Kull
There's a tremendous frustration in the public about the perception that special interests dominate, that members of Congress spend all kinds of time trying to fundraise and that they're influenced by their donors and that they're not really listening to the people. That undermines the confidence in government. So it's really key that the public has the experience that members are listening. And that's why it's really critical that the member comes. They often come in a little nervous at first. “Oh my God,” they said, “are people gonna yell at me?” And then they realize, “Oh yeah, we're having every kind of meaningful conversation.” And they relax. And there is a real discussion. And that's what people want to know, is that we're all here together thinking about what's for the common good. How can we best serve the common good? And it's not just about the people who go to the event. It's important for people in the district to know that this kind of thing is happening, that the member is listening to the people. This is really important for just developing confidence in democracy. And I think it would be great if there was a congressional appropriation to support this kind of activity so that we could have a national academy for public consultation, develop these policy-making simulations and really do this on a large scale. And so whenever there is a major vote to come up in Congress, we would be doing these kinds of processes all over the country.
Robert Pease (host)
And Jillian Youngblood of Civic Genius on her ideas for taking Citizen Panels out of the test kitchen and to a wider population.
Jillian Youngblood
It's a great question, and one that we certainly think about all the time. So one relatively quick way to scale, these would be in addition to doing them congressional district by district, I think we could also do these statewide with Senators, which would just bring a lot more people into the events. I think the real answer though is to formalize this idea that members of Congress should consult their constituents. There are all kinds of caucuses in Congress: there's the craft beer brewing caucus, there's the 4-H caucus. So, you know, what I would like to see is the listen to your constituents' caucus, or a right to petition caucus, something where members opt in and say, I want to affirmatively be part of this group, I'm going to do four of these a year, I'll do one every quarter. When I'm back in the district, I'll do them in person. When I'm in Washington, I'll do them online. It's going to be part of my persona. That's the kind of member I am. It's going to be my political identity that the thing I care about most is what my constituents want. And I think if you can really build that into the culture, you can change the culture of Washington, and I think that you can dial down a lot of the volume back home.
Robert Pease (host)
That was Executive Director Jillian Youngblood of Civic Genius and a bit more audio from their surprisingly civil and productive Citizen Panels.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
These are part of a movement toward deliberative democracy where a cross section of a district is selected for serious policy discussions with congressmembers in attendance.
Robert Pease (host)
There are other groups making similar efforts at Stanford and Ohio State, and there’s a good amount of Citizen Panel material available on the Civic Genius website and Vimeo account.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
And check their schedule of upcoming panels in case there’s one coming to your district. We’ll plan to check back with Civic Genius to see if they are able to scale their events to a wider number of Congressional districts.
Robert Pease (host)
Meantime, in our next episode, two geographers named Ryan tell us about one fundamental factor that unfortunately does tend to polarize Americans.
Emily Crocetti (reporter)
The simple fact of where you live.
Ryan Enos
What we can see is that even within cities, you'll see that Democrats and Republicans separate from each other, they live in distinct places. And what surprised us even more is if you go down to even smaller levels in those cities, if you go down to neighborhoods within the same city, you'll see the Democrats and Republicans tend to separate from each other a little bit, even within the same neighborhood, they don't live in the same places. And that surprised us.
Robert Pease (host)
Please stay tuned for the “Geography of Polarization,” share us on social media, and please review us on Apple Podcasts. Also, Edition 2 of Purple Principle in Print newsletter is now available through our website. This is Robert Pease and Emily Crocetti for the Purple Principle team. Alison Byrne, producer; Kevin A. Kline, audio engineer; Emily Holloway, research and outreach; Dominic Starlett, research associate. Original music composed and performed by Ryan Adair Rooney.
