Permalink, Sortitionists at the South Australian Constitutional Convention, cam, 582 words, 1 comment, Sortition, South Australia, South Australia Constitutional Conventions, Deliberative Poll

In 2003 South Australia held a constitutional convention to look into improving the state's parliamentary system. The convention went for just over two days and included "Deliberators". These were citizens chosen by sortition from the South Australian voting age population.

The final report [pdf] has some interesting observations;

• A better understanding of the parliamentary process improved the sortitionists impression of parliaments effectiveness.
• Opinion amongst the sortitionists for a bicameral parliament with the capability for either house to block legislation firmed. The endorsement of bicameral parliament increased from 65% prior to deliberation and 80% afterwards.
• A majority supported shorter terms for Legislative Councilors, from eight years to four. Attitude and support for proportional representation in the upper house firmed to a majority.
• After deliberations 50% wanted more Assembly representatives, while 47% thought 47 Assembly Representatives was enough and 7% thought less. The sortitionists had no problem with the Executive Cabinet being drawn from both houses with 75% agreeing with it.
• The sortitionists wanted an independent speaker who is not involved with their party. A significant minority even agreed that the speaker should resign from their party and be an independent MP.
• Citizen Initiated Referenda [CIR] had support amongst 65% of sortitionists, and this dropped to 64% after deliberations with 35% opting for specialists to fulfill that role and against CIR. After deliberations 70% of the sortitionists believed that CIR should apply to existing and new laws. There was no consensus on the type of CIR.
• The three most popular reforms ordered by the sortitionists were; Optional preferential voting, Citizen Initiated Referenda and Four Year Terms for the Upper House.

Even though the convention only went for two and half days, the sortitionists involved became active citizens taking their duty seriously and trying to discover all they could on the issues. For such a short period of deliberation they also learnt a great deal about the system of government of South Australia.

The convention is a very cheap cost for civic involvement and education. For instance prior to the convention on the question of; Do all states [not including territories] have bicameral parliaments with only Queensland being unicameral? Prior to deliberation 29% answered this correctly, afterwards 96% did.

The sortitionists became engaged because of direct involvement;

Consistent with the observation from previous Deliberative Polls that committed delegates do indeed prepare for their deliberations. Most of the Representative South Australians (93%) who attended the Constitutional Convention had read at least half of the Discussion Papers they were sent prior to their attendance at the Convention.

A majority (57%) had read most or all of those materials. Further, when asked about the extra research activities they did in preparation for their deliberations, around half the delegates engaged in additional research activities than their usual pattern of behaviour.

The sortitionists also found the experience valuable, informative and worthwhile;

when asked about their overall level of satisfaction with the group process, an overwhelming 95% said they were satisfied, with almost 85% citing "very satisfied" or "extremely satisfied."

In my opinion people do want to be involved, but on their own terms and not through parties or the media. The explosion of the Australian political blogosphere is a good example of this. Sortition processes allow a citizen and individual to engage themselves in politics without the normal organisational mechanisms that have probably led to the perception of political alienation in the first place.

More reading: Tags, Sortition, South Australia, South Australia Constitutional Conventions, Deliberative Poll