New America Foundation and the Commonwealth Club of California cordially invite you and your colleagues to a luncheon discussion on "Reconnecting Californians to Their Government: A Citizens Assembly for Political Reform".

Full details are available here.

Date/Time:
Wednesday, January 25th
12:00-1:30 p.m.
Light lunch will be served

Location:
The Commonwealth Club of California
595 Market Street, Second Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105

Speakers:
Joseph Canciamilla
Assemblyman (D-Pittsburg)

Gordon Gibson
Former Member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia;
Architect of British Columbia's Citizens Assembly

Vikram Amar
Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings

Steven Hill
Director, Political Reform Program at the New America Foundation

Moderator:
Judy Nadler
Senior Fellow in Government Ethics, Markula Center for Applied Ethics
Santa Clara University

Voters want change, despite the failure of last November's reform ballot measures. Political analysts have recommended a number of reforms, from redistricting, revised term limits, and open primaries to alternative election systems and the public financing of campaigns. But how do we change a system when powerful interests defend the status quo?

A model solution lies across the border in Canada. Called a Citizens Assembly, its strength lies in restoring power to the people. British Columbia recently delegated the task of basic political reform to its own citizens by creating a panel of 160 voters chosen at random (like a jury pool). The Citizens Assembly members spent several months studying the performance of their democracy and ultimately proposed a change for voters to consider on the ballot. In doing so, British Columbia took stale partisanship out of the political process.

This highly successful experience has been turned into bipartisan legislation that was introduced this year into the California State Assembly and is receiving broad attention. The Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters recently wrote that Governor Schwarzenegger "should stop negotiating the terms of his surrender to the Legislature and make the [Citizens Assembly] his new crusade." Join the New America Foundation as we discuss the political implications of using Citizens Assemblies here in California.

RSVP to Lily Ho at (916) 448-5189. If you have questions about the panels, please contact Steven Hill at (415) 665-5044.

New America Foundation is sponsoring three events statewide:

• January 24th in Los Angeles
• January 25th in San Francisco
• January 26th in Sacramento.

For more info about the proposal for a California Citizens Assembly, see this article in the Sacramento Bee. Also, visit our links page.

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New America Foundation is an independent, nonpartisan public policy institute based in Sacramento and Washington, DC. With generous support from the James Irvine Foundation, its purpose is to bring exceptionally promising new ideas to the fore of public discourse in our state and nation. More information is available at www.newamerica.net/california.