A colleague Todd Sears recently wrote:

I thought I’d write to let you know that I used an argument map last night to inform a public conversation about whether to change our school budget voting system from what it is (one meeting and you have to be physically present to vote), to the (of all things!) Australian Ballot system (secret ballot, polls open all day, and absentee ballots available).

So, I went through the articles, editorials, and opinion pieces I could find on the matter and collapsed those into a pretty simple argument, which it is. Simple reasoning boxes get the job done.  Our voters had never really seen this kind of visualization.  It’s nice to be able to see an argument exist in space, and to demonstrate by pointing and framing that a “yea” vote needs to buy into the green points, but also that they need to reconcile the red points, somehow. It had very good response.

Ultimately, the AB motion was defeated by five votes.  Still, it was a good example of a calm, reasonable, and civil dialogue.  A nice change from the typical vitriol and partisan sniping.

Here is his map (click to view full size version):

Bethelmap

When I suggested that readers of this blog might find his account interesting or useful, he added:

Let me clarify what I did because it wasn’t a classic facilitation.

1. I reviewed all of the on-line Vermont-centric AB content I could find in the more reputable news sources, and put a specific emphasis on getting the viewpoints of the more vociferous anti-AB folks in my town so that I could fairly represent them.

2. I created a map from that information and structured it in a way that spread out the lines of reasoning in an easily understandable way. I could have done some further abstraction and restructured things, or made assumptions explicit using the “Advanced” mode, but chose to focus on easily recognized reasoning chains.

3. I sent the map out to the entire school board, the administrators, a couple of politicians, the anti-AB folks and some of the other more politically engaged people in town.

4. The session was moderated by the town Moderator, who set out Robert’s Rules of Order. Then discussion began. In fact, the first ant-AB speaker had my map in his hand and acknowledged the balance and strength of both sides of the argument.

5. I let the session run its course, and then explained what I did and how I did it, and then reviewed the Green and Red lines of the debate, explaining that a vote for or against means that the due diligence has to be done in addressing the points counter to your own position, and I demonstrated how this should be done. Though I was in favor of AB, I maintained objectivity and balance, rather than a position of advocacy one way or another.

Overall the session was very civil, informed, and not one point was made (myriad rhetorical flourishes aside) that was not already on the map. Many variations on similar themes, but nothing that hadn’t been captured.

And followed up with:

BTW, just 30 minutes ago I received an e-mail which said this:

Hi,

I love the map of the issues around Australian Ballot that you sent out. Is there an easy way to make such a map? We are tackling some issues that have our faculty at Randolph Union High School pretty evenly split and I think two such maps would be a powerful way for my colleague and I who are leading this change to communicate. It looks as if it was created in PowerPoint. If you are too busy to elaborate that’s fine too.

Thanks for your leadership on the Australian Ballot issue. I appreciate it.