In June 2024, something remarkable happened in New Hampshire. Fifty-five citizens from across the Granite State—representing different political perspectives, ages, and regions—gathered at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics for an unprecedented three-day Citizens Assembly. Their mission: to tackle some of the state’s most pressing challenges around elections, political responsiveness, and polarization, and to develop a legislative agenda together.

This wasn’t your typical town hall meeting filled with serial monologues and frustration. This was a carefully designed Citizens Assembly—a deliberative democratic process that brings diverse citizens together for in-depth exploration of complex issues and collaborative development of policy recommendations.

The first statewide Citizens Assembly focused on three issues identified through extensive listening sessions and polling:

• Strengthening voter confidence in elections
• Reducing polarization
• Improving political responsiveness by elected representatives

The challenge was significant: How do you enable 55 people with differing perspectives—assembled to be representative of the state’s demographics and political diversity—to have meaningful dialogue, develop policy proposals, refine them based on feedback from the full group, and arrive at recommendations that reflect genuine consensus, all in a single weekend?

We integrated our Collaborative Community Conversation methodology into the Citizens Assembly framework to:

• Enable every participant to be heard and see their ideas combined with those of other assembly members
• Provide real-time synthesis of ideas shared at table discussions during the deliberation
• Give participants both quantitative and qualitative feedback on policy proposals
• Allow for iterative refinement of recommendations based on collective input
• Accelerate the movement from individual opinions to collective recommendations

The Assembly Process in Action

Over the three-day assembly, participants:

Learned from Multiple Perspectives: Assembly delegates heard from a variety of experts and stakeholders, including NH Secretary of State staff demonstrating voting machines, former legislators who co-chaired the Special Committee on Voter Confidence, and policy analysts providing comparative data on NH versus other states.

Provided and Received Feedback: This is where the rapid feedback methodology became essential to the Citizens Assembly process.

Using engagement technology and a dedicated “Theme Team,” we enabled the assembly to capture collective wisdom and iterate quickly:

Real-Time Synthesis of Draft Policy Statement Input  Before moving into issue specific breakout groups, participants discussed questions like “What’s most important to pay attention to as you tackle this topic?” or “What’s missing from the background information?”, scribes captured their input. Our Theme Team—working behind the scenes—read responses from all groups simultaneously, identified key themes, and presented them back to the full assembly within minutes.

This meant that instead of losing the richness of small group deliberation, we could show participants the collective thinking of the entire assembly, creating shared understanding of priorities and concerns before working in issue specific breakout groups.

Deliberated in Small Groups: For each of the three issues areas, participants worked in facilitated breakout groups to examine problem statements, evaluate potential solutions, and develop policy directives addressing the three focus areas. 

Rapid Feedback Cycles on Policy Proposals

When breakout groups presented their draft policy directives to the full assembly, we employed a two-part feedback process:

1. Quantitative Assessment: All participants used polling devices to rate their level of support for each proposal on a scale from “strongly oppose” to “strongly support”
   
2. Qualitative Input: At their tables, participants discussed: “What needs to change in order for you to raise your level of support to vote ‘Yes’ to approve the policy directive as drafted?“

The Theme Team then synthesized this feedback, identifying the specific changes needed to build broader support. This feedback—both the polling results and themed qualitative input—was printed and provided to breakout groups before their next revision session.

This process was repeated twice over the weekend, allowing groups to see both how much support their proposal had and what specifically needed to change to build stronger consensus.

The Power of Rapid Feedback Within the Citizens Assembly

This rapid feedback methodology proved essential to making the Citizens Assembly process work within a compressed timeframe:

Transparency Builds Trust: Participants could see that their input was being captured accurately and completely. The polling results gave everyone a clear sense of where the assembly stood, and the themed qualitative feedback showed the specific concerns that needed to be addressed. This transparency is essential for the legitimacy of Citizens Assembly recommendations.

Efficient Iteration: Rather than spending hours debating what might build consensus, groups had concrete data about what their fellow citizens needed to see changed. This dramatically accelerated the refinement process—critical when an assembly has only 2.5 days to move from learning to deliberation to recommendation.

Inclusive Participation: Every participant’s voice contributed to the feedback—not just the loudest or most assertive. The combination of polling and small table discussions meant that both introverts and extroverts could participate fully, honoring the Citizens Assembly principle that every voice matters.

Collective Ownership: By the time proposals came to final votes, participants felt genuine ownership of the recommendations because they had directly shaped them through multiple rounds of feedback. This is essential for Citizens Assemblies, where the goal is not just to produce recommendations but to build civic capacity and democratic engagement.

Remarkable Outcomes

By Sunday afternoon, this diverse Citizens Assembly had developed and approved four policy recommendations with extraordinary levels of support:

• 89% approval: Create an Independent Redistricting Commission
• 87% approval: Improve Voter Awareness and public understanding of NH election processes
• 85% approval: Institute a “Single Ballot” Primary with partisan affiliation optional
• 83% approval: Improve Pre-K-12+ Civics Education

These weren’t incremental tweaks—these were substantive policy recommendations that spanned the traditional political spectrum. And they achieved supermajority support because the Citizens Assembly process, enhanced by rapid feedback methodology, enabled genuine deliberation and refinement based on the collective wisdom of the group.

Since the assembly, many delegates have continued working with New Hampshire Together staff to advance these recommendations, testifying before legislative committees and engaging with policymakers.

Building a New Tradition

The New Hampshire Together Citizens Assembly demonstrated that when you combine the proven Citizens Assembly model with technology and processes that enable rapid feedback and synthesis, citizens can do the hard work of democracy. They can learn from diverse perspectives, bridge divides, find common ground, and develop solutions that reflect both individual values and collective priorities.

As one participant noted in their closing reflection:

“This showed me that we can come together and solve problems if we have the right structure to do it.”

New Hampshire Together is now working to organize more local, regional, and statewide assemblies—building a new tradition for nonpartisan engagement in the Granite State.

We’re grateful to have partnered with The People, New Hampshire Together, Public Engagement Associates, and the dedicated team of facilitators and scribes who made this Citizens Assembly possible. Together, we demonstrated that Granite Staters—and by extension, Americans everywhere—have the capacity to strengthen democracy when given the opportunity, structure, and tools to deliberate together.

---

The New Hampshire Together Citizens Assembly was held June 21-23, 2024, at Saint Anselm College. The policy recommendations developed by participants are being reviewed by the NH Secretary of State and Legislative Advisory Council. Learn more at www.newhampshiretogether.us