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We're raising seed funding and building a founding community.
See below for our approach, as we partner with organizations in the national movement.
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§The Founders Warned Us
We revere the architects of American democracy. We've forgotten their sharpest warning.
Political parties would destroy the republic. We haven't heeded that, but the flaws in the system have become undeniable.
Founders designed a system built on debate, compromise, and citizen deliberation — and they expected future generations to keep innovating. Instead, we got exactly the disease they feared most.
The good news? The American people do value innovation. We've demonstrated creative brilliance, resolve, and perseverance, time and time again. It's time we turn that attention to how we self-govern.
Alexander Hamilton*Letter to Theodore Sedgwick, July 10, 1804. founders.archives.gov
"I am no believer in the amalgamation of parties, nor do I consider it as either desirable or useful for the public."
John Adams"A division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil."
Thomas Jefferson*Letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823. Library of Congress: founders.archives.gov
"Political parties are the 'most fatal disease' of popular governments."
— Later voices, same warning —
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Dwight D. Eisenhower*Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961. Eisenhower Presidential Library.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence — whether sought or unsought."
Deliberation — when people (citizens randomly selected, open to all, or elected officials with the space to do it) do real research, hear each other out, and reach considered decisions together. People come in with opinions — but first-person testimony and research sharpen the decisions they reach. Software, or unbiased facilitators, can help run the process; they don't make the decisions.
§Three Ways Citizens Assert Power
Unlike the billions spent in the “outrage industrial complex”The “Outrage Industrial Complex” — the for-profit and non-profit ecosystem that profits from partisan division. Media running on outrage. Lobbyists that benefit from gridlock. Politicians whose careers depend on having an enemy. $27.6 billion per cycle turning citizens into tribal teams and policy into theater — and only ~3¢ of every dollar goes to repairing the system itself.
Full market analysis → trying to get change made with the system, our approach isn’t about getting politician or legislature approval. Citizens already have tools to self-govern — and our power, when we do, is enormous.
1
Annual Citizen Assemblies with Real Power
In more than 20 states, citizens can put this directly on the ballot — no legislature needed, no politician’s permission.
Annual Citizen Assemblies with Real Power
In more than 20 states, citizens can put this directly on the ballot — no legislature needed, no politician’s permission.
Citizens’ Assemblies deliver. In Ireland, a randomly selected assembly deliberated abortion law for months — hearing medical experts, ethicists, and citizens across all positions — and arrived at a compromise framework with specific conditions and limits; 66% of voters backed it at the ballot box. In Western Australia, a Citizens’ Jury on voluntary assisted dying heard from doctors, disability advocates, and faith communities, and recommended a carefully safeguarded framework; Parliament enacted it in 2019. Oregon has required citizen panels on ballot measures since 2011 — mandated by state law, embedded in the official Voters’ Pamphlet. When randomly selected people are given real information and actual responsibility, they make decisions that hold up.
Why this works where partisan politics doesn’t:
- Nuanced, reasonable policy that accounts for broad concerns — because the process is designed to hear all of them. Not just the loudest, not just the best-funded.
- Collaboration is rewarded, not punished — the assembly succeeds when members reach workable answers together. There’s no donor to impress, no base to terrify, no reelection to protect.
- No lobbying, no grandstanding, no punishing the other side, no courting donors — the process explicitly prohibits private influence, and it’s structured so none of those moves get you anywhere in a room of randomly selected citizens.
- No billionaire backing required — this is a citizens’ initiative. It needs organizing, a model text, and citizens willing to put it on the ballot.
- Outside the control of politicians and special interests — advocates, lobbyists, and officials can submit testimony and ideas through the same public process as every other citizen. None of them run the room. The deliberation belongs to the assembly.
- Every member serves one session, then goes home — permanently term-limited by design. No professional class, no entrenchment, no career to protect.
Read the full model initiative → Model Initiative Details · State viability research →
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Make Direct, Coordinated Acts of Speech
In states without the ballot initiative path — a crowd, coordinating, can be very powerful, especially when it legitimately speaks for the whole district.
Make Direct, Coordinated Acts of Speech
In states without the ballot initiative path — a crowd, coordinating, can be very powerful, especially when it legitimately speaks for the whole district.
There’s something dramatically different about the voice of a whole city or district — citizens gathered across the political divide. Unlike special-interest lobbies, a cross-partisan citizen group carries moral high ground — and we intentionally build groups with that legitimacy, then take visible stands together.
What we do:
- Build cross-partisan citizen groups that can speak for the district, not just one side
- Take visible, coordinated public stands on specific issues — letters, testimony, public events
- Make it undeniably clear that this isn’t one party’s agenda — it’s the district’s
Many cities and counties also have charters that can be amended by local initiative — a closer-to-home version of the same idea, available even where the statewide initiative path is closed.
A variation — acts of “collective will”: the same cross-partisan group decides how to spend a pooled budget. Citizens choosing how to allocate a small donor-raised fund — an on-ramp into real deliberative practice.
3
At the Federal Level — The Longer Arc
A cross-partisan voting bloc can swing close races at any level. State Citizen Assemblies are building the proof that makes it scale.
At the Federal Level — The Longer Arc
A cross-partisan voting bloc can swing close races at any level. State Citizen Assemblies are building the proof that makes it scale.
How a few hundred citizens can change everything. In competitive districts decided by razor-thin margins, a cross-partisan coalition — Republican, Democrat, and Independent — who commit to voting together holds the balance of power. When 5–10% of a district votes as a disciplined bloc spanning both parties, they can swing the seat. The NRA had fewer than 1.5% of voters at its peak and blocked gun control for decades, even when 70% of Americans supported it. We’re applying the same arithmetic to a very different end.
Once Americans have seen how sensible Citizen Assembly policy can be — transparent, nuanced, cross-partisan deliberation producing actual results — they can unite to demand their representatives hew to the voice of the district. One example: cross-partisan voter groups committing to support only candidates who agree to vote per the outcome of a public, deliberative voice of their district.
And as more states demonstrate what deliberation produces, the demand for structural election reform grows: getting money out of politics, anti-gerrymandering, ranked choice and open primaries, term limits. These all look more possible — more necessary — once people have seen what’s possible.
State Citizen Assemblies show the proof of concept that makes everything else possible. We don’t need the federal government to move first. We need enough states to show it works — and then the federal path opens.
Misinformation doesn’t scale to a room of 150.
Organizations trying to fight misinformation across millions of people face an almost impossible task. In a deliberation room of 150 randomly selected citizens, the same problem becomes tractable: participants get direct access to the experts they choose, can push back in real time, and have to persuade the person sitting next to them. The dynamic that makes misinformation dangerous at scale is exactly what a Citizen Assembly is designed to break.
§Deliberative Methods Produce Better Results
People who have worked with deliberative bodies of random citizens report that they simply far outperform our “expert politicians.” See these four examples from among hundreds.
Ireland's Citizens' Assembly on Abortion
2016–2018 · One of the most divisive issues in Irish society
99 randomly selected citizens — a cross-section of Irish society across age, gender, geography, and belief — spent five weekends hearing from medical experts, legal scholars, and women with lived experience.
Many arrived undecided or conservative. Through structured deliberation, they reached a recommendation far bolder than any politician had dared propose.
The national referendum that followed passed in a landslide — and the process was remarkably peaceful. The assembly had already done the hard work of reconciliation.
- 99 randomly selected citizens
- Diverse on politics, age, gender, race, income
- Met over 5 weekends
- Reached 87% unity on their decision
- The national vote followed … 66% voted Yes
And this isn't just an Irish story. There are hundreds of examples of citizen-assembly-style bodies in the United States — city, county, and state. The essential ingredient, in every one that works: the group represents the real diversity of the district, politically and otherwise. And they take real time to listen to each other.
§What We're Building
We support three interlocking efforts — each designed to make the others more powerful.
1
Spark the Conversation
Most Americans have never seriously considered that democratic alternatives are possible. We change that — through storytelling, media, and public dialogue that makes the idea impossible to ignore.
2
Foster Real Demonstrations
Fund and support citizen assemblies and deliberative experiments — in swing districts, online, locally. Every experiment produces evidence and momentum. The Belgium model didn't start as national policy; it started as a proof.
3
Organize for Power
Citizens voting as a cross-partisan bloc, rewriting local charters, and putting deliberative democracy on state ballots. This is how it becomes permanent. No politicians' permission required.
§A Virtuous Cycle
Each success makes the next one easier. That's how movements scale.
Conversation spreads awareness and creates demand for experiments. Experiments prove common ground is real, attracting people to the lever. The lever's impact — elected officials actually listening — proves change is possible.
That proof restores hope. Hope fuels more conversation. The cycle accelerates.
Donors and volunteers arrive. The network grows. And the idea that citizens can govern themselves stops being idealistic — and starts being obvious.
§How This Is Different
Most political effort in this country works inside the existing system — lobbying, campaigning, advocating for better candidates, hoping the right people win. Billions are spent, fighting the other side.
We're doing something structurally different. We focus on organizing alternative local civic infrastructure, where people learn to make decisions and take action, with deliberative methods at the center.
None of this requires politicians to want to change. It requires citizens to stop asking permission.
Cross-Partisan Throughout.
Everything we do must be balanced across the political divide. The voting coalitions only have leverage if they span liberal and conservative — that's the entire mechanism. A coalition of only progressives has zero additional power; their votes are already locked in. The power comes from crossing the aisle.
So we don't just aspire to balance — we require it, structurally, at every level.
Funding
Every million capped at 50% from each side
Leadership
Our board and leadership will ensure red, blue, and independent voices have equal power (since each is roughly a third of eligible voters).
Coalitions
Voting blocs must include balanced R, D, and Independent participation to have leverage
Every Experiment
Significant liberal + conservative + independent participation in every initiative. All sides, always.
Founding Team
We will not launch publicly without a named conservative co-chair on the founding board.
§About the Founder
Brian Burt has spent 20+ years leading multi-million-dollar technology projects, starting companies, and leading teams to successful launches.
He founded and ran MaestroConference for 12+ years — working closely with the Obama White House and campaigns on 30,000 events (including 50+ with the President and Michelle personally), and serving customers including Airbnb, the World Bank, Stanford, and hundreds of other nationally respected organizations. He invented breakout groups for conferencing, holds three patents, and exited the business in 2022.
Before MaestroConference, he led Charles Schwab's first AI-driven personalization system (serving billions of messages to 20M users monthly), and later managed a $25M+ portfolio at the Federal Reserve Bank.
Brian's career has spanned administrations and sectors — Wall Street, central banking, civic tech, and presidential-level convening.
Working on a solution based on citizens rather than politicians gives me tremendous hope. But to make this happen, we need a lot of people to contribute either with their time or resources, and join the effort. Will you join us?
— Brian Burt, Founder