Will Spur Citizen Participation and Involvement Statewide
TUCSON, AZ — The state’s three CEO groups have joined forces to expand Arizona Voices Institute‘s innovative online collaboration platform, azvoices.gov, urging residents statewide to participate in civic discussion and involvement. The effort is a combined initiative of the Southern Arizona Leadership Council (SALC), Greater Phoenix Leadership (GPL) and Northern Arizona Leadership Alliance (NALA).
“Civic engagement by the citizens of Arizona is a key to our state’s future,” said Ron Shoopman, president and CEO of Southern Arizona Leadership Council. “SALC is proud to partner on the Arizona Voices project because it provides the people of Arizona easy access to pending legislation and an opportunity to share their opinion directly with Arizona’s legislators and governor. We encourage everyone to get involved at azvoices.gov.”
Arizona Voices is the first civic engagement platform of its kind, where voters can rate pending legislation, discuss the issues and policies that impact our state with fellow Arizonans and propose innovative ideas to the elected officials. The site lets Arizona registered voters follow, discuss and instantly rate active legislation on a six-degree scale from “strongly oppose” to “strongly agree.”
GPL’s President and CEO Neil Giuliano agreed. “This is a very exciting development for both GPL and the Arizona Voices Institute, with the three statewide leadership organizations coming together to advance this impressive platform to promote civic and public policy engagement of our citizens across our state. We want to encourage more open dialog and input from Arizonans about the future of our State as we tackle the important issues of education, job creation, fiscal stability, transportation infrastructure and growing of our economy.”
NALA CEO T. Paul Thomas added, “NALA feels it is important to make sure that Arizona voters are engaged with the lawmaking process. That’s why we are proud to be partnering with the GPL and the SALC to provide this service.”
The initiative has received bi-partisan praise for advancing civic dialog and involvement across the state.
Sen. Bob Worsley from District 25 in Mesa came up with the idea for the platform as a way to streamline, consolidate and automate constituent input, which comes from random sources such as email, regular mail, fax, phone, social media, in-person meetings, and formal Senate hearings on bills. He believes the site will help legislators get a better picture of their constituents’ concerns and encourage broader participation both by registered voters and the public in the legislative process The new site offers a 24/7 forum for all Arizona citizens to voice their opinions.
In addition to indicating support or opposition on current bills, registered users can post ideas on various topics and begin dialogs about how to improve the state and address issues confronting the state. Upgrades to the system include a weekly summary of all bills and votes sent to legislators, and the Request to Speak system is now integrated on the site as a resource to help facilitate placing comments and opinions on the official record of the State Legislature.
Advocacy and constituent organizations are invited to collaborate with Arizona Voices by emailing info@azvoicesinstitute.org for more information on how to become involved.