National Town Hall Meetings
Hold National Town Hall meetings which would be conducted according to Robert's Rules of Order. The President would call a national town hall ...more »
Hold National Town Hall meetings which would be conducted according to Robert's Rules of Order. The President would call a national town hall meeting, set the agenda including the issues to be discussed and will determine the number of states, counties and cities to be involved and specify the date and time of these meetings.
CONDUCTING TOWN HALLS
A person representing the President and members of Congress from the district would call each meeting to order, and put the question of who will be elected meeting chair to those attending. The meeting would then vote on who will be Chair and the Chair will read the agenda and divide the group up into policy issues or small groups of 5-10 people who will then elect group moderators who will lead the group in discussion and ensure Robert's Rules are followed.
At a specified time the group will vote on their issues electronically or by voice vote. This will then be electronically passed to the group moderator or the group moderator will pass the information to the group moderator who will enter it electronically.
Then the entire meeting will be called back to order and the Chair will lead a discussion of the issues as voted on by the various groups. Once discussion has been completed and everyone has had the opportunity to speak or the fixed time has been reached the Meeting Chair will put the question(s) to attendees who will vote on each issue either electronically (depending on the software being used) or in person. The issues and votes will then be entered into the computer if they haven't already and the President, members of Congress and other town halls will be able to see how each town hall voted.
Then the President will call on the first town hall to obtain the floor by logging on and ask the Group Chair to present their conclusions. If he or members of Congress who are co-hosting the meeting have questions they would be able to ask them.
The President would then go through the list of town hall meetings until each group has had the opportunity to speak at least once. Then the attendees of the national town hall would be asked to vote on what was discussed. This if at all possible would be done electronically or directly but either way the results would be electronically or manually entered into a computer.
The President would then conclude the meeting, thank everyone for their time and turn the meeting back over to the town hall chairs. Each chair would then conclude the meeting.
TECHNOLOGY TO BE USED
Depending on the needs of each town hall the technology used may vary but the technology exists and the technology used by the town halls would vary based on size and current needs and resources yet the administration would provide each state, legislative district, or city town hall representative with basic to be used at the meeting. Depending on the size of the meeting the President may choose to provide each attendee with a voting machine (simple clickers which are inexpensive could also be used).
HOW MANY ATTENDEES
Depending on the issues and what the administration and members of Congress would like to accomplish anywhere from 1 to 1,000's of town hall meetings could attend the national town hall meeting. The number of attendees at each would vary but the administration could (on a first come, first serve) basis determine a fixed number of attendees at each of the town hall meetings.
Let's assume that the President would like to hold one meeting in each state to be held at its State Capitol. The number he wishes to attend is 1,000. The town halls would be divided up into small groups of 10 (as I noted above) and the total number of groups at each town hall would be 10. These meeting would convene on the specified day and time with an agenda.
The meetings would last or about 2 to 3 hours depending on the agenda and then they would link up with the White House, members of Congress and the other town halls through the chosen online medium.
If each town hall would be allowed to address the President for 10 minutes that would be a total of 50 minutes of the President's time and a commitment of 3-4 hours of attendees time. The voting results would be provided to the President in aggregate form and he could use the information to make decisions or if he chooses he could ask the attendees to stay for a prolonged discussion that lasts for a few more hours.
CONCLUSION
As you can see the idea could be tailored depending on specific circumstances and could be a major town hall involving millions of Americans in cities and states around the country or a town hall meeting with several legislative districts. I have tried to avoid going into the details of such town halls because that would detract from the simplicity of what can be done and which can be expanded to include millions of Americans.
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