When Massachusetts voters enter their polling stations on November 3, they will have to decide on nine ballot questions, the most since 1994. They will make policy choices on a wide range of topics, from recriminalizing recreational marijuana (Question 8) and maintaining gun safety laws (Question 9) to replacing party primaries with a process in which the top two vote-getters of any party gain access to the general election ballot (Question 3).

This is a lot to ask of voters. Policy language that appears on the ballot is often complex and it can be challenging to understand all the consequences of proposed statutory changes. Voters also have to assess the arguments made by sundry “vote yes” and “vote no” campaigns, which are often misleading. Remember the $5M campaign led by the supermarket and beverage lobby to successfully defeat the bottle bill in 2014? Their ad blitz was rightly called out for making false claims about the percentage of residents with access to curbside recycling.

Adding yet further confusion, recent rule changes now allow lawmakers to weigh in on ballot measures after the formal session has ended and even after November. “It’s really complicated for voters if you can’t even measure the potential impact of the ballot question… because it’s going to interact differently with changing laws,” observed Evan Horowitz, Executive Director of the Tufts Center for State Policy Analysis.

One solution to this problem is to adopt a Citizen Initiative Review (CIR), a process pioneered in Oregon in 2011. CIR is a form of deliberative democracy that gives ordinary citizens the opportunity to assess the evidence and arguments for and against ballot proposals.

Here is how it works in the Beaver State:

10,000 randomly selected registered voters from around the state are invited to participate. Out of those who respond to the invitation, a panel of 20 to 24 voters is formed that reflects the electorate in terms of political affiliation, age, geography, gender, race, education, and other demographic characteristics. This process is referred to as sortition.

After receiving some training on how to work collaboratively, evaluate the reliability of information, and deliberate, the delegates hear testimony from campaign advocates as well as independent experts. The delegates then deliberate in small groups with the support of trained moderators and craft a Citizens Statement that includes key findings and the strongest arguments both for and against the ballot measure. This statement is then distributed to voters.

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While Oregon remains the only state to have formally institutionalized CIR in state law, the process has been piloted in Arizona, California, Colorado, and right here in Massachusetts in 2016 and 2018. The first effort, led by then State Representative John Hecht of Watertown and Tufts University’s Tisch School of Civic Life, asked its panel to review the marijuana legalization initiative.

According to independent researchers, the 2016 panel achieved a high quality of deliberation and produced a statement that was both accurate and easy to understand. The vast majority of voters rated the published statement as either “very informative” (42%) or “somewhat informative” (52%). The process was piloted again in 2018, when a panel reviewed a proposal to establish nurse-to-patient ratios in Massachusetts hospitals.

CIR does several different things at once. First, it gives voters an objective guide to help them make informed decisions on ballot questions. Second, it gives everyday folks – plumbers, nurses, teachers, truck drivers, small business owners – the opportunity to meaningfully participate in the process, similar to jury duty. Third, it invites those with widely differing political views to sit down and talk to one another about complex policy issues.

All of these are critically important at a time when many Americans have lost faith in democracy and its ability to deliver positive change. Those of us who believe in self-government have to find creative ways to show that democracy can work and that ordinary people can come together across differences to solve problems. Citizen Initiative Review does just that.