Integrating Deliberation and Voting in Participatory Drafting of Legislation
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Deliberation and voting are considered antithetic: In deliberation, the aim is to convince or be convinced; in voting, the aim is to win. Here, we propose a process for participatory legislation that integrates deliberation and voting. It can be used by a legislation-drafting committee, by the legislature itself, by an interest-group to propose legislation representing its democratic will, or by the electorate at large. The process updates a common draft to reflect the preferences of the participants, letting participants propose, deliberate, and vote on revisions to it. Votes are implicitly computed based on the edit-distance between proposed revisions and the common draft. The process proceeds in rounds of deliberation and voting and can be concluded upon a range of conditions, including reaching consensus, a Condorcet-winner, a time limit, or a stalemate.
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