Daily Resource Highlight - 10/03/2022

Posted by on October 03, 2022 at 1:51 PM

Below are the highlights and featured resources of this past week’s Daily* Resource.

September 27, 2022 - From Science to Practice: Civic Health Project & Listen First Project Discuss What ACTUALLY Works

Anti-democratic attitudes, support for political violence, and partisan animosity are on the rise in America. It’s an alarming trend, and one that demands solutions.

Using the Scientific Method to Change Minds

Enter the Strengthening Democracy Challenge. The Civic Health Project, Listen First Project, and Stanford led a massive experiment, involving 31,000 (!!!) Americans, to determine the best ways to reduce these destructive attitudes. They exposed the participants to 25 short, online interventions that they crowdsourced from the public. 

 On Thursday from 9 AM to 4 PM ET, the Listen First Project will discuss:

  1. How the experiment was designed and conducted;
  2. Which interventions were effective; and 
  3. How well experts did in predicting the results.

(Be sure to leave a comment on Citizen Connect’s Twitter about what you learned!)

Independent Redistricting: Not That Great?

As somebody who believes strongly in the scientific method, I am thrilled about this project. If we hope to fulfill America’s promise, we must learn what works and what doesn’t work. For instance, I was shocked to learn that independent redistricting commissions are only marginally better than partisan legislators at producing competitive districts. 

That research paper, which was supported by the Unite America Institute, invites other questions. Like is it still worth it to fight for independent redistricting? Are competitive districts the best measure of quality redistricting? Are there better ways to solve the Primary Problem?

There is so much to learn, and we cannot wait to tell you about all of it.

September 28, 2022 - Our Bad! Correction on Science to Practice; And An Event by NFRPP

Yesterday we told you about the Strengthening Democracy Challenge and Thursday’s presentation of its design and results.

Turns out, we made a couple mistakes.

First, Listen First Project is co-hosting the event, rather than presenting, along with Civic Health Project, and Stanford University.

Second, and more importantly, the event is happening tomorrow from Noon ET to 4 PM ET. Not 9 AM to 4 PM like we said yesterday. Make sure to register now to learn more about this groundbreaking study.

We also want to take this opportunity to the Network for Responsible Public Policy’s (NFRPP) latest offering – Speaking Rationally With Steven Pinker at 7:30 PM ET tonight. Pinker is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and he’ll discuss why people buy into irrational conspiracy theories.

September 29, 2022 - Refusing the “Us vs. Them” Message; CARE LAB Shows the Way

I hate election season. It seems like everybody is reading from the same playbook; paint your opponent as a villain and yourself as a voice for the people. And between the primaries and general elections, we’re barely out of one election cycle when another begins. What a great way to hammer the “us vs. them” mentality into our heads!

But if you know anything about the Bridge Alliance, you know that we firmly reject this mindset, and our members give us endless counter examples. 

The latest example comes from CARE LAB, which is bringing together a baker’s dozen worth of staffers from Democratic and Republican Senate offices as part of their Three Dinners program. These staffers are bonding over “shared challenges and daily struggles, and these commonalities help set the stage for more challenging conversations.”

On the other hand, actions speak louder than words. Well, would you look at that! Over the last year-plus, we had bipartisan bills on infrastructure (69-30 Senate vote) and gun control (65-33 Senate vote). And it appears the Electoral Count Reform Act (which MWEG helpfully summarized here) will also pass with strong bipartisan support after Mitch McConnell endorsed it.

We also know that Americans in general agree on a lot. There are many, many, many examples of this, some of which you can see on Voice of the People’s website, including criminal record reform, which inspired this short video by Civic Genius.

In other words, there’s clearly much more comradery among Americans and our elected leaders than all those “us vs. them” campaign ads would suggest. Now we just need to convince the parties that “common ground” ads can win elections.

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