Who chooses the ten subjects, and why should anyone accept that list?

The ten starting subjects in the My Vote Forward demo were chosen by the project itself as a provisional working list, and they are stored as versioned configuration so that changes are recorded rather than silent. That answer does not dissolve the objection: whoever writes a list of subjects shapes what people appear to care about, and research on question design shows the effect can be large. Who should hold that power in any real use of the framework, and how an omission could be appealed, is unresolved.

The objection in its strongest form

The objection to My Vote Forward’s ten subjects is that a fixed list is not a neutral container. It is a claim about what public life consists of. A critic on the left might note that a list without a separate “labor” or “inequality” subject quietly folds those concerns into “economy and work.” A critic on the right might note that a list without “family” or “religious liberty” files those concerns under headings their holders would not choose. A critic of both might say that any ten-item list privileges issues that national media already cover and makes it harder to register a concern nobody thought to name.

At its strongest, the objection goes further. Critics of this kind argue that the power to keep a question off the table can matter as much as the power to win a vote on it. If the framework publishes “collective priorities” computed from a list it wrote, it converts its own editorial judgment into something that looks like the public’s voice. Versioning and transparency do not fix that, the critic says, because most people never read the version history. They see the ranking.

Why the objection matters

Agenda control matters for My Vote Forward because priorities are the one part of the framework designed to be public. A published ranking of subjects is easy to quote and hard to qualify. If the list is skewed, the skew travels with every quotation of the result. It also matters because the framework’s stated purpose is to make participation between elections more informative. A list that systematically misses what some communities care about would make participation less informative for exactly those communities, and could teach them that the exercise is not for them.

Defined terms

• Agenda setting: the process by which some issues come to be treated as important and others do not. The term is used both for media influence on issue salience and for formal control over what a body considers.
• Closed-ended question: a question that offers a fixed list of answers.
• Open-ended question: a question that lets the respondent answer in their own words.
• Subject list: in the My Vote Forward demo, the ten broad subjects a participant can rank. See priorities.
• Versioned configuration: a list stored with a version number, date, and change record, so that earlier answers stay tied to the wording they answered.

Evidence

The most direct evidence that a list shapes answers comes from survey research. Pew Research Center describes a 2008 experiment in which voters were asked what issue mattered most to their presidential vote. When the economy was offered as an option, 58% chose it; when the same question was asked open-ended, only 35% volunteered the economy.⁠¹ Among people given the closed list, 8% gave an answer other than the five offered; among people asked open-ended, 43% gave an answer that was not on the list at all.⁠¹ Pew states the general rule plainly: “the choice of options provided, how each option is described, the number of response options offered, and the order in which options are read can all influence how people respond”.⁠¹

Order matters too. Pew reports that “the order in which questions are asked can influence how people respond” and that “earlier questions can unintentionally provide context for the questions that follow”.⁠¹ A ranked list is a sequence of items presented together, so these findings apply directly to how a subject list is displayed.

Research on news media points the same way at a larger scale. In a 1972 study, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw argued that editors and broadcasters, by choosing what to cover and how prominently, may set the “agenda” of a campaign.⁠² That research concerns media, not participation tools, but it supports the general claim that whoever decides what is displayed influences what people treat as important.

How comparable systems have handled it

Existing participation programs allocate agenda power in visibly different ways. None has solved the problem; each makes a different trade.

• Legislature sets the topics. Ireland’s 2016 to 2018 Citizens’ Assembly was established by a resolution approved by both Houses of the Oireachtas in July 2016, and that resolution set out its five topics, including the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution and climate change.⁠³ Its members were “selected at random to represent the views of the people of Ireland”.⁠³ Random selection of members did not extend to random or citizen selection of topics: the elected parliament chose the agenda.
• Participants help build the agenda. vTaiwan, created by the civic technology community g0v in collaboration with government, says it begins formal discussions “when needs are articulated,” and reports that in its UberX case “More than 4000 participants crowd-sourced our meeting agenda”.⁠⁴ That spreads agenda power, but only among people who took part.
• Open submission, then official review. In Reykjavík’s My Neighborhood program, ideas are first collected from residents, then “reviewed,” then “selected for the ballot,” and finally residents vote.⁠⁵ Residents originate the ideas; the city’s review stage decides which reach the ballot. The city’s page does not say who conducts that review.⁠⁵

The pattern is consistent: programs that let anyone propose still have a gate, and programs that use a fixed agenda still have an author. The question is not whether someone holds agenda power but whether that power is visible, reviewable, and answerable.

Competing interpretations

One view holds that a short, fixed list is the honest choice. It makes results comparable over time, keeps the exercise usable on a phone, and puts the author’s judgment in plain view where it can be criticized. On this view the open-ended alternative is worse, because answers in people’s own words must be coded into categories by someone, and that coder exercises the same power less visibly.

Another view holds that any fixed list should be a starting point that participants can change. Pew’s open versus closed comparison suggests that a closed list both concentrates answers on offered options and suppresses answers that were not offered.⁠¹ On this view a framework that cares about representation should collect open responses, publish how they were coded, and let the list evolve from what people actually say.

A third view, associated with deliberative designs like Ireland’s assembly, holds that an accountable elected body should set the agenda and citizens should deliberate within it.⁠³ That locates agenda power with people who can be voted out, at the cost of letting incumbents decide which questions are asked.

What the framework answers

My Vote Forward’s current answer is a set of design rules, labeled provisional:

• The ten subjects are a demo choice and a coverage experiment, not a claim that ten is the right number or that these are the right ten.
• The subject list, its version, its order method, and the aggregation method are published with every result (see priorities).
• Each version records who proposed it, who reviewed it, the date, and the reason for changes (see governance).
• A changed list does not silently rewrite earlier answers; earlier rankings stay tied to the version they answered.
• Questions are reviewed against the question design guidance before use, and where independent review is not available, the page says so.

Hypothetical example. A future community pilot adds “child care” as an eleventh subject after many participants raise it in an open comment field. Under the framework’s rules, the release would show results under both versions, state the date of the change, and not merge the two as if the list had always included child care.

Where the objection still wins

The objection wins on its central point. Today, the people who wrote the list are the people who run the project. There is no independent panel, no participant vote on the list, and no formal appeal that is decided by someone other than the original author. Versioning makes the choice visible but does not make it legitimate. The framework also has no evidence yet about whether its ten subjects miss concerns that matter to particular communities, because no real participant data has been collected.

Unresolved questions

• Who should hold final authority over the subject list in a real deployment: the operator, an independent panel, participants, or a public body?
• Should the list be built from open-ended responses, and if so, who codes them and how is the coding published?
• How often may a list change before results stop being comparable over time?
• How would anyone detect that a list systematically misses one community’s concerns?

Related

• Priorities
• Governance
• Question design
• Collective priorities
• Can wealthy groups dominate?
• Hard questions