Deliberative Polling for Summit Public Schools
For the first time, over 200 California public high school seniors from the Bay Area participated in a Deliberative Poll on the issues of voting rights and the value of being informed about politics and public policy. Over the course of one school day, students deliberated with one another on the Stanford University campus and had the opportunity to hear from leading experts in the field.
This Deliberative Polling event was prepared, conducted, and results were analyzed by Stanford undergraduates enrolled in Communication 138: Applying Deliberative Democracy, which was a course sponsored by the HAAS Center for Public Service and Center of Deliberative Democracy. This course aims not only to serve as a learning experience for the Stanford undergraduate students, but also to test the feasibility of high school students participating in a Deliberative Poll and to assess the results of the event.