House Speaker Joanna McClinton joins Q&A with Pennsylvania voters during America in One Room event

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Speaker of the Pennsylvania state House of Representatives, Rep. Joanna McClinton, joined the America in One Room project held in Philadelphia over the weekend, where she took questions from residents from around the commonwealth.

The questions pertained to actual proposals before the state legislature on issues such as voting rights, restricting access to social media for minors and helping formerly incarcerated people reintegrate into society. They originated from moderated small group discussions held beforehand, during which participants debated from the perspectives of their personal experiences. However, the large room Q&A session allowed them to speak directly with a high-ranking legislator.

For the majority of the questions, McClinton, who represents Philadelphia and Delaware counties, clarified the issues and legislative proposals. On the issue of photo identification requirements for voters, one participant asked if there were free options for low-income people or those experiencing housing instability.

“I don’t want anyone to be disenfranchised because they can’t afford the $40 to get a photo ID or have that amount for a poll tax,” they said.

McClinton explained that while photo ID is currently only required when people vote for the first time at a precinct, “we do not currently provide free identification cards from the state.” McClinton also added that people need to provide a permanent address to obtain an ID, which is an issue for those experiencing housing instability.

A question on the reintegration of the formerly incarcerated appeared to inspire a new policy proposal.

“If employees refuse to hire people who were recently released from prison, what benefit comes from providing parolees with education?” asked another participant. “Would the state be willing to lead the way by employing recently released people?”

McClinton called it an “excellent idea.” “I will take that recommendation back to Harrisburg.”

McClinton told WHYY News later that the state has made significant efforts to reduce the obstacles the formerly incarcerated face when looking for jobs, but “the idea of proactively ensuring that our communities know what’s available at the state level and have a pathway like every other candidate” was new.

‘A public voice worth listening to’

That kind of exchange, organizers say, is the very point of America in One Room: to get voters to spend more time thinking about the issues with people from different political viewpoints, and then use those conversations to better inform legislators.

“When you set up conditions that make it easy for people to talk to each other and get good information in a civil environment, they’re very smart collectively, and they have a public voice worth listening to,” said James Fishkin, director of the Deliberative Democracy Lab at Stanford University, which co-organized the event alongside Helena, a “nonpartisan problem-solving” funder, according to CEO Henry Elkus.

Elkus, 30, the son of a venture capitalist and self-described policy nerd, started Helena in his junior year at Yale.

“We have no political bend one way or the other, and we’re agnostic to the type of solution as long as we think they could work,” Elkus told WHYY News. The problem they were focused on in Philadelphia: “division in American politics.”

Fishkin developed deliberative polling in the 1990s for a more accurate measure of where constituencies stand on key legislative issues.

In addition to the small breakout sessions and the forum with McClinton, they were also given the opportunity to hear from subject matter experts such as Claire Finkelstein, a law and philosophy professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School; Simon Hankinson, a border policy expert at the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation; and Hollie Russon Gilman, who specializes on civic engagement at the left-leaning think tank New America. They covered topics including voting rights, immigration and school vouchers.

Participants were given a survey at the beginning of the three-day event and will take another survey at the end to measure how positions may have changed based on their discussions and exposure to experts. Their small group sessions were also recorded. America in One Room will compile its findings, provide them to elected officials such as McClinton and make them public, complete with the raw data.

The process is not cheap; Elkus puts it in the “low seven figures,” all of which is raised for the event that covers the costs for participants. America in One Room is already engaging in less expensive online methods, but Elkus said they will continue to organize regular in-person events to ensure that there is the “human-to-human interaction and that nuance of physically being together in an environment” that he feels is important for real exchange.

“You can obviously do it cheaper with an AI moderator, you can do it online, you can do it through these kinds of online groups and you can get technically more people to do it,” he said. “We’re very cautious about how we scale this.”

Fishkin, who has personally overseen 160 deliberative polling projects, said he hopes that the methodology will be adopted on a broader scale, such as schools and other “venues where we think it could make a useful input.”

McClinton said she already regularly hears from her constituents, but believes America in One Room is providing a deeper understanding of what a wider public wants than those who are motivated to reach out to her office.

“I wish more people knew that their voice is important,” she said. “A lot of times we wait for decisions to be made for us, and we don’t proactively just take a little bit of time to communicate to our members in the state House, the state Senate, Congress. If more people did that, we would have better outcomes because we would hear directly from our constituents.”

Kathy Patterson, a participant from Drexel Hill, said that she appreciated the opportunity to hear directly from McClinton, as well as Republican state Sen. Joe Picozzi, who also joined a Q&A session the day before.

“I thought she was forthcoming,” Patterson said. “She was interested and very open to comments and questions.”

Patterson said she “loved” the deliberative polling experience but expressed some doubts that it would improve the political situation.

“I really feel like [politicians] have their own agendas,” she said. “Republicans vote on a Republican agenda just because it’s a Republican agenda without regard for whether it’s good or bad and Democrats won’t vote on it just because it’s a Republican agenda for the same reason.”

It was a sentiment shared by Paul Schlecker, a retired teacher from Wayne.

“There’s a lot of outsiders talking into the ears of the politicians and the ones with the bucks get the ear, whether they’re lobbyists or higher-ups in their parties,” he said.

Both Patterson and Schlecker, however, said they thought the event was balanced in its approach.