The case study describes a deliberative event conducted in a Missouri college classroom in 2012. The deliberative event was organized around a series of assignments, inspired by the Citizens Initiative Review Process in Oregon, Healthy Democracy, and the Living Voters Guide.
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Problems and Purpose
This deliberation's focus was on a proposed ballot measure to be featured in a fall 2012 election in the U.S. state of Missouri. In the introduction of the paper regarding this deliberative event, the author laments the state of argument in American discourse and advocates for the use debate in the college classroom setting (Cole, 2013). The author seems to see the classroom setting as a good point of proliferation for the type of deliberative values she does not currently see evidenced within American society (Cole, 2013).
Background History and Context
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a health insurance law enacted in the U.S. on March 23, 2010. The ACA provided that uninsured persons would purchase health insurance on exchanges, some of which would be set up and run by U.S. states at their discretion, and one of which would be run by the U.S. federal government to enable the purchase of insurance by residents of states that did not create exchanges (Forsberg, 2018). Missouri's Proposition E of 2012 was a ballot initiative that concerned who should decide whether Missouri would establish a health-insurance exchange. A "yes" vote on the proposition would restrict, to the Missouri legislature or Missouri voters via a ballot measure, the power to enact a Missouri health-insurance exchange. A "no" vote on the proposition would allow Missouri's governor to use an executive order to establish a health-insurance exchange in the state (Cole, 2013).
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
This process was organized by Assistant Professor Hayley J. Cole of the University of Missouri.
Participant Recruitment and Selection
Methods and Tools Used
This specific deliberative process was employed to model efforts of the Citizens’ Initiative Review that occurs with regularity within Oregon government. In Oregon, this participatory tool was used as a means to create a more informed voting populace by creation of a voter’s guide to better inform voting decisions. This tool has a history of use in academic settings as well as its’ more commonly intended use in providing informative context to ballot initiatives. This specific participatory event has been held before in many Oregonian Citizens’ Initiative Reviews. The classroom formatting for this event was described in the 2017 text (Shaffer, Longo, Manosevitch, & Thomas, 2017).
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
Analysis and Lessons Learned
See Also
References
Cole, H. (2013). Teaching, Practicing, and Performing Deliberative Democracy in the Classroom. Journal of Public Deliberation, 9(2). Retrieved from https://www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol9/iss2/art10/
Forsberg, V. C. (2018). Overview of health insurance exchanges. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service. Retrieved from https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44065.pdf
