| Evaluative Democracy-- Municipal Model |
The Public Forum is chaired by a twelve-person Citizen Panel to decide the basic collective priorities of the
municipality. Members of the Panel are randomly selected from any adult of the municipality wanting to be on it.
Examples of possible basic collective priorities would be clean drinking water (including adequate protection of watersheds), clean air (which entails pollution control), adequate housing, low unemployment, preserved environment, financial soundness, reasonable urban congestion, and adequate municipal services. The Panel would clearly define the priorities, and prioritize them.
The evaluation and determinations by the Citizen Evaluation Committees would be according to what candidate and their policies etc., are more sound in terms of the established basic collective priorities of the municipality. The evaluation process would be viewable by the citizens of the municipality, and they would have access to both a summary of the determinations, and the complete determinations including all evaluations.
The public dispute and criticism process would entail written public submissions (from citizens of the municipality), which the Citizen Evaluation Committees must respond to.
Positions in a municipal government would be determined by an internal self-nominating process and an evaluation of the candidates by the other serving political representatives and in terms of the basic collective priorities of the municipality. If hypothetically all serving political representatives want the same position, then one of the Citizen Evaluation Committees would be called upon to evaluate the candidates.
The citizen-initiated evaluations would be restricted to gross failure of a political representative to adhere to the basic collective priorities of the municipality and gross misconduct.
Notes:
The Panel would hold three public forms open to all citizens of the municipality, before determining the basic collective priorities of the municipality. (The Panel's decision-making would entail an evaluation of the proposed priorities in terms of their more soundness, and be subject to public dispute and criticism. Also, the Panel can ask relevant experts to present information.) Moreover, an evaluation test would be conducted to screen candidates for the Citizen Panel, in order to ensure a quality of result.