Exciting news concerning the citizens assembly proposal in the Netherlands

It hasn’t been easy following citizens assembly developments in the Netherlands because the key documents are in Dutch. But now I have some of the key information in English.

Without question, the proposed California citizens assembly is more ambitious than the one being implemented in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, the scope is tightly restricted to focus on voting systems. And though the government is sponsoring the citizens assembly, the assembly’s final recommendations will be advisory only. It has no authority to place its recommendations on the ballot for a referendum.

On the other hand, whereas a citizens assembly in California is a long shot, in the Netherlands it’s already happening—and happening soon. Letters have already gone out to approximately 100,000 randomly selected individuals, and the citizens assembly will start meeting in late March. Here is the chronology as presented to me.

July 8, 2005--The Interior Minister sends a letter to parliament announcing a citizens assembly to discuss a new electoral system for the Netherlands. An attempt to connect the assembly to a referendum fails, so the citizens assembly is only advisory.

September 15, 2005--A conference, organized by the Interior Minister, discusses how to implement a citizens assembly in the Netherlands. The agenda, in Dutch, can be found at http://www.minbzk.nl/contents/pages/43719/uitnodigingcongresburgerforumkiesstelsel.pdf.

February 1, 2006-- After receiving a final green light from the cabinet a few days before, the Interior Minister publicly announces the start of the citizens assembly. Letters are sent to 100,000 people inviting them to take part in the assembly, which is to start at the end of March. Citizens from urban areas are expected to be less responsive, so urban inhabitants are over-sampled. A multi-stage random selection process will closely follow that used in British Columbia. The composition of the assembly will be as follows: 140 members, divided equally between men and women. The final selection criteria, as in British Columbia, will only be geography and gender. There will be no safety valve, as in California, if there is some unexpected ethnic, socioeconomics, or other bias in the resulting sample. The convention chair will be Jacobine Geel, a theologian and TV-personality. Her biography, in Dutch, can be found at http://www.burgerforumkiesstelsel.nl/de-voorzitter.html. An expert group of political scientists and legal scholars will prepare the content for the meetings. The citizens assembly will meet five times from Friday evening through Saturday.

For additional information, in Dutch, see http://www.burgerforumkiesstelsel.nl/.