Nick Troiano

uh no although it could be set up in a binding way but right now many of the ones that are being done are advisory you know in nature um yeah i think there are there are interesting ways in which may be integrated into the citizen initiative process itself we can use citizen assemblies to determine what gets to go to the ballot i mean it's just it's an improvement in to what direct democracy you know can look like so i'd say like

over the next decade plus there's going to be needs to reimagine what democracy looks like i mean we're coming up on our 250th anniversary as a country we've gotten here um i think by continuing to look at and innovate and improve the way that we can self-govern and we need to be responsive to the times and so whether it's these election reforms or citizen assemblies uh the idea is that we need to keep democracy fresh to keep it working i'll tell you i would i would um

I mean, if you put in a poll right now and ask most Americans, would you rather keep the 535 leaders we currently have in Congress or do a lottery and try out something new for a couple of years?

I'd be interested in how to come back, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people would be open to trying something a bit new.

And this model, like you said, is not a foreign concept.

Juries make life or death decisions.

Surely they are also capable of informing what our marginal tax rate could be.

By the way, the pathway that many of these reforms take.

take at the state level is through the initiative process where citizens get to decide this and shape their own government directly.

And that process needs to be protected.

It is under attack in many states right now by legislatures that are trying to increase the threshold of what it takes to pass a ballot initiative to make it harder to qualify.

So I think everyone who cares about democracy, and especially in the reform movement, is

ought to be working together to make sure that we protect and improve the citizen initiative process.

There will be initiatives on the ballot next November that will both attempt to make things worse that we need to defeat, and a couple states actually innovating with constitutional protections of the initiative process so that legislatures can't undo them in the future.

I think the time was before now for a convention to re-examine some of the, not principles of our constitutional design, our checks and balances, our separation powers, but the structures.

I mean, whether you believe there ought to be an electoral college or not, no one can argue that it's functioning in the way the founders designed it.

So what does it look like to improve and modernize that?

As you know, what people fear about a convention is the runaway convention.

Will they do something to radically change?

But those critics forget there's a ratification process.