Participation over time

Most people think of civic participation as voting on election day. But most public decisions take shape long before any ballot, and keep changing long after. A plan is talked about, written, argued over, sometimes put to a vote, and then carried out, or not.

My Vote Forward looks at that whole path. At each stage, a different kind of input makes sense. Before a proposal exists, saying what matters most is useful. While a proposal is being written, opinions on drafts are useful. If it reaches a ballot, the vote decides. After that, people can follow whether it was carried out.

There is a catch. You live under several governments at once: a country, a state or province, a county, a city, a school district, and often special districts. Each has its own calendar. So there is no single "time between elections." This chapter explains how the framework deals with that.

Defined terms

Pre-proposal stage. The period when a problem is recognized but no specific proposal exists. Priorities are the main input here.

Development stage. The period when proposals are drafted, compared, and revised. Opinions on specific drafts are the main input.

Qualification stage. The formal process by which a proposal is placed before an adopting authority or onto an official ballot, under the rules of that jurisdiction.

Voting stage. The official decision by the responsible body or electorate. See Private voting.

Follow-through stage. Implementation, funding, legal challenge, amendment, or repeal after a decision.

Jurisdictional calendar. The schedule of elections, budget cycles, filing deadlines, and decision points for one government.

Overlapping jurisdictions. The several governments whose boundaries include a single address.

The five stages

The framework uses five stages as a general model. Real processes vary, and some proposals skip stages entirely: most laws are passed by legislatures without any public vote.

1. Pre-proposal

At this stage people can say which subjects deserve attention. That is the job of priorities. Group priorities can be public and can inform which problems officials, journalists, and community groups take up.

What does not make sense yet: opinions on a proposal, because there is no proposal. Asking people to "support housing" at this stage measures a priority, not a policy view.

2. Development

Drafts appear. They may come from officials, agencies, community groups, or petitioners. At this stage, opinions on specific drafts are meaningful, and so is information about cost, authority, and dependencies. See Proposals.

Existing practice shows that structured development can be built into public processes. Reykjavík's "My Neighbourhood" participatory budgeting runs every other year: residents submit ideas, the ideas are reviewed and shortlisted for a ballot, residents vote, and winning ideas become projects the following year ¹. That cycle includes all five stages in miniature.

3. Qualification

Some proposals must pass formal gates before a vote. These gates are set by law and are specific to each jurisdiction.

In California, for example, proponents of a statewide initiative have a maximum of 180 days from the official summary date to circulate petitions and file signatures; a measure that qualifies is eligible for the next statewide general election held at least 131 days after it qualifies ². Since July 2011, statewide initiatives there appear only on statewide general election ballots ³. In Switzerland, a federal popular initiative has 18 months to gather 100,000 signatures, and an optional referendum on a new federal law has 100 days to gather 50,000 ⁴.

These timelines mean that a proposal circulating today may not reach voters for a long time, or ever. The framework shows each proposal's actual qualification status and never implies that a vote is scheduled when it is not.

4. Voting

Where a vote happens, it happens through the responsible authority, on an official ballot, under that authority's law. The frequency varies enormously. The Swiss federal government says its electorate is called to vote "approximately four times a year to vote on an average of fifteen such issues" ⁴. In many other places, voters decide few or no measures directly, and their participation in specific policy choices runs through representatives. See Representation.

These websites do not conduct votes. See Private voting.

5. Follow-through

A decision is not the end. Funding may not arrive. Courts may intervene. A later body may amend the result. Implementation may be slow or partial.

Some voter-approved rules include ways for elected bodies to adjust them. California's Proposition 98, approved by 51 percent of voters in November 1988, set rules for a minimum annual funding level for K-14 education; the Legislature "can suspend the minimum guarantee for one year at a time with a two-thirds vote of each house" ⁵. Whatever one thinks of that arrangement, it shows that a vote can create a continuing obligation whose application can be revisited in later budgets.

The framework treats follow-through as a stage where people can still participate: tracking whether a decision was implemented, what it cost, and whether it worked. Effectiveness is a separate question from popularity. See Tradeoffs and Evaluation.

Hypothetical example. A county voters' measure funds new library hours. Two years later, hours have expanded at three branches but not the other two, because of staffing shortages. Residents who supported the measure may now hold opinions about a revised staffing plan. That is a new proposal at the development stage, linked to the earlier decision.

Overlapping calendars

In the United States, the Census Bureau's 2022 Census of Governments counted 90,837 local governments, rising to 91,438 by 2025 ⁶. The Bureau attributes the increase largely to special district governments in four states. Local governments of several kinds can overlap, so any one address lies inside several of them, and each may hold elections, adopt budgets, and decide proposals on its own schedule.

This has three consequences for the framework.

1. "Between elections" is relative. It is always between some elections and close to others. A school district's bond vote may fall in a year with no city election.
2. Stages overlap. One proposal may be at the development stage while another, from a different government at the same address, is at the voting stage.
3. Localization is required. A person's participation view must be built from the governments that actually include their address, with each government's own calendar. See Jurisdictions.

The framework therefore organizes participation by proposal and by jurisdiction, not by a single election calendar.

What the framework does not promise

• It does not promise that a ballot measure is pending or will be.
• It does not promise that any institution will act on a priority or opinion.
• It does not create new legal powers. Where voters have no initiative power, the framework does not suggest otherwise.
• It does not treat participation frequency as a goal in itself. More frequent input from the same small group is not broader participation. See Representation.

Evidence

• Existing practice: Reykjavík's biennial participatory budgeting cycle ¹.
• Primary election rules: California initiative circulation, qualification, and election timing ^{2 3}.
• Comparative practice: Swiss federal initiative, referendum, and voting frequency ⁴.
• Legislative analysis: Proposition 98's ongoing guarantee and suspension rule ⁵.
• Official statistics: U.S. local government counts ⁶.
• Design proposal: the five-stage model and its mapping to inputs. This is a teaching model, not an empirical finding. Historical forms of participation between elections are covered in Participation between elections.

Competing interpretations

"Continuous participation strengthens democracy." One view holds that participation limited to election day leaves people with little influence over the decisions that shape their lives, and that structured input at each stage improves both decisions and trust.

"Continuous participation exhausts people and empowers the persistent." Another view holds that frequent participation opportunities are used mostly by people with time, money, and organization, so that more stages mean more influence for those already advantaged. Evidence that opt-in participants are more civically engaged than the general public supports this concern. See Representation and Measurement.

"Stage models oversimplify." A third view holds that real decisions are messy and nonlinear, and that a five-stage model gives a false sense of order. The framework uses the model for teaching and allows any proposal to move backward, skip stages, or end.

Application to this framework

• Every proposal shows its current stage and the date that stage was reached.
• Inputs match stages: priorities before proposals, opinions on drafts, votes only through official processes, and tracking after decisions.
• A person's view is assembled from the jurisdictions that include their address, each with its own calendar.
• No interface states or implies that a vote is pending unless a responsible authority has scheduled one.
• Follow-through records implementation, cost, and evidence of effectiveness separately from support.

Unresolved questions

• How can address-based jurisdiction lookup be accurate without collecting more personal data than needed? See Privacy.
• How should long-dormant proposals be shown? When does a proposal stop being "in development"?
• Does a stage model increase participation by people who do not usually take part, or only the frequency of those who already do? See Evaluation.
• How should the framework handle jurisdictions with no direct democracy at all?
• Who maintains calendars for tens of thousands of local governments, and how are errors corrected? See Governance.