Can Online Town Halls Fix Our Broken Politics?

PositionPOLITICAL LANDSCAPE

It is an idea for repairing our broken political system which is so promising that new members of Congress will learn about it before taking office in January. Now the question is: will more members of Congress adopt it? The idea is "deliberative town halls," which are conducted online between representatives and randomly selected constituents. They are designed to discuss a single issue in depth, avoiding scripted talking points and rancorous outbursts.

The research supporting this initiative is detailed in Politics with the People: Building a Directly Representative Democracy, written by three political scientists. "People feel like politics is not going well in the U.S., particularly political dialogue," says coauthor Michael Neblo, associate professor of political science at Ohio State University, Columbus.

In the book, the authors point to low approval of Congress, as well as retirement speeches by politicians like Rep. Charlie Dent (R.-Pa.) and former House Majority Leader John Boehner (R.-Ohio) that mention our broken political system as contributing to their decisions. "We believe we have a way to help us dig out of this mess," Neblo maintains.

Neblo wrote Politics with the People with Kevin Esterling of the University of California, Riverside, and David Lazer of Northeastern University, Boston, Mass.

Their idea of town halls is nothing like the typical ones that are seen on YouTube, which generally either are infomercials or free-for-alls that attract mostly strong supporters and people with specific grievances.

In their studies, the researchers recruited randomly chosen constituents that ended up being more representative of eligible voters in their districts than were actual voters. They drew people into the process, rather than just having self-selected political enthusiasts attend.

For one study, the researchers set up 19 online town halls with 12 members of the U.S. House of Representatives (seven Democrats and five Republicans) and groups of about 30 of their constituents. They also conducted a similar study with then-Sen. Carl Levin (D.-Mich.) and about 175 of...

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