Module 1Prepare20–30 min

The anatomy of a proposal

A good deliberation is mostly won before anyone speaks. This module covers the preparation work: turning a topic into a decidable question, settling who decides and what counts as enough of them, fixing the window and the decision rule before argument starts, and building in reversibility so the group can afford to be wrong. By the end you can fill in a one-page Proposal Form that locks all six parts.

Watch this happen: the demo opens with exactly this step — a proposal being framed and locked before the room opens. Watch the proposal stage, then come back and pull it apart here.

1.1 A decidable question, not a topic

"The future of the hall" is a topic. "Should we hire a cleaner for four hours a week from 1 August, paid from the maintenance fund?" is a question. The test is simple: could a reasonable person vote no? If "no" has no meaning — because the wording is a direction of travel, a value statement, or three decisions rolled into one — the room will spend its energy arguing about what is actually being asked, and the eventual tally will mean different things to different voters.

A decidable question names the action, the scope, and the start: what would change, how much of it, and from when. One sentence. If you cannot get it into one sentence, you have more than one proposal — split it, and decide them in order.

The one-sentence test: read your question aloud to someone who wasn't in the drafting. If they ask "so what exactly happens if it passes?", it isn't decidable yet.

Splitting is not stalling: two clean questions decided in sequence beat one bundled question that half the room votes on for reasons the other half never heard.

Example — Fernside Garden Collective. Ana's first draft was "Fernside should do more for food security." Well meant, undecidable — no one can vote against a sentiment, and no one knows what passing it commits anyone to. Her filed version, VA-2026-014, reads: "Convert eight of our twenty-four plots — the shaded south edge — to a shared food-bank bed of winter greens, June to September." Action, scope, start. Ruth can now vote no and mean something by it.

1.2 Who decides — and what counts as enough

Before the question is argued, the group must know whose decision it is. Members only? Plot-holders only? Anyone on the mailing list? Each answer is defensible; leaving it unanswered is not, because the losing side of any close vote will — reasonably — challenge a roll that was defined after the count.

Quorum is the second half of the same protection: the minimum participation for the result to bind. A 3–1 vote among four people cannot commit forty. Set quorum as a number or fraction of the defined decider group, and set it before the window opens, so that a quiet poll fails visibly instead of passing quietly.

Key points

Define the decider group by a criterion anyone can check (e.g. "financial members as at the date the proposal is filed"), not by who happens to show up.
Quorum protects the group from being committed by a handful — and protects the handful from being blamed for it.
If the proposal affects people outside the decider group, say so in the proposal. Deciding for others without naming it is how goodwill is spent.

1.3 The window and the close

A deliberation needs a stated opening and a stated close: a period in which positions and reasons are given, and a poll-close moment after which the count stands. Without a close, decisions drift — the discussion reopens whenever someone unhappy has energy, and "we decided" becomes "we were talking about". Without a stated opening, early movers frame the question before the quiet members have seen it.

Size the window to the stakes and the group's rhythm: a week is common for a small collective; a reversible, low-stakes call can close in days; anything constitutional deserves longer. What matters is not the length but that it is declared before argument starts and not moved once the arguing is under way — extending a window mid-fight always favours whoever asked for the extension.

Example. VA-2026-014 declared its window on the form: deliberation 26 May to 1 June, poll closing 2 June at 7 pm — a full week with a weekend inside it, so weekday-working and weekend-working members alike got a fair run at it. Elena's voluntary-rows alternative arrived on day three; because the close was already fixed, it could be heard in full without anyone having to decide whether hearing it was "delaying".

1.4 Choose the rule before the argument

The decision rule — simple majority, supermajority, consent (no standing objections), ranked options — is part of the question, not an afterthought. It must be fixed before anyone argues, for one hard reason: once positions are known, every rule choice visibly favours a side, and whoever picks the rule at that point is picking the winner. A rule chosen in ignorance of the count is a rule; a rule chosen after the count is a manoeuvre.

Matching rules to stakes — when consent is worth its cost, when majority-with-safeguards is the right call — is the whole of Module 3. For now the discipline is only this: the Proposal Form names the rule, and the room opens with the rule already on it.

Discussion topics

Recall a decision where the voting rule was settled (or bent) after the discussion had started. Who benefited?
Which of your group's standing decisions were made under a rule nobody could name at the time?

1.5 Reversibility: sunsets and the right of return

Groups over-fight decisions they believe are forever. Building reversibility into the proposal lowers the temperature without pretending the stakes are lower: it makes the cost of being wrong recoverable. Two standard tools:

Two tools

Sunset: the decision expires on a named date unless renewed by a fresh decision. The default is return to the status quo; continuing is what requires action. Temporary things that need a decision to end have a way of becoming permanent things nobody decided.
Right of return: the people who give something up under the decision get a named, guaranteed way back to what they had — written into the proposal, not left to goodwill. Whoever bears the cost of the trial should not have to win a second vote to recover their position when it ends.

Reversibility is also what a fair process owes the losing side. "You lost, forever" invites relitigating by other means. "You lost, and the decision ends on a named date unless freshly renewed" lets people lose and stay. And when dissent is recorded properly (Module 4), the sunset date is where that dissent gets its fair rehearing — with a season's real numbers instead of predictions.

Example. Ana's filed proposal already carried a right of return: displaced plot-holders get first right of return to their plots in October, when the winter bed ends. Marcus added the sunset in deliberation — "a season is an experiment; a precedent is forever" — so the conversion ends on 30 September automatically, and renewal needs a fresh proposal and a fresh poll. Neither device defeated the proposal; both made it possible for cautious members to consent to it.

1.6 What to lock before the room opens — the Proposal Form

Everything above lands on one page. The Proposal Form is filled in and fixed before deliberation opens; from that moment the arguments may change minds, but not the terms of the contest. Six fields:

The Proposal Form

Field	What goes in it
Reference	A short unique identifier, so the record and every later mention point at the same thing.
Decision sentence	The one-sentence decidable question: action, scope, start.
Who decides + quorum	The decider group, by checkable criterion, and the minimum participation for the result to bind.
Window + close	When deliberation opens, and the exact date and time the poll closes.
Decision rule	The rule the count will be judged by — named now, argued never.
Reversibility	Sunset date and/or a right of return for whoever gives something up; or an explicit "irreversible, because…" if truly one-way.

Example — VA-2026-014, as filed. Reference: VA-2026-014. Decision sentence: convert eight of our twenty-four plots — the shaded south edge — to a shared food-bank bed of winter greens, June to September. Who decides: all 24 members of the Fernside Garden Collective; quorum half the membership. Window: deliberation 26 May – 1 June; poll closes 2 June, 7 pm. Rule: consent poll, as set by the collective in its charter. Reversibility: runs one winter only; displaced plot-holders hold first right of return in October. (In deliberation, Marcus hardened that end date into an automatic sunset and Priya changed how the eight plots are chosen — Module 2 shows both amendments forming.)

You don't need us for this. The Proposal Form works as a sheet of paper pinned to the shed door, a page ruled up in the minute-book, or an email with the six fields filled in — dated, and read aloud at the start of the meeting so everyone heard the same terms. Village Assembly puts the same form behind a link, timestamps the lock, and won't open the room until it's complete — convenient, but it is one good way of keeping a discipline any group can keep with paper.

Self-check

1. Which of these is a decidable question, rather than a topic?

Only the tanks sentence names an action, a scope, and a start — a reasonable person could vote no and mean something by it. The others are directions of travel or values: nobody can meaningfully oppose them, so a vote on them decides nothing.

2. Why must the decision rule be fixed before argument starts?

No rule is inherently fairest — Module 3 matches rules to stakes. The discipline is timing: fixed in ignorance of the count, any reasonable rule is legitimate; fixed afterwards, every rule visibly serves a side.

3. What does a sunset clause or right of return chiefly protect a group against?

Turnout is quorum's job, and bundling is caught by the one-sentence test. Reversibility makes the cost of being wrong recoverable: the sunset makes continuing (not ending) the thing that needs a decision, and the right of return means bearing the trial's cost never costs anyone their way back.

← The values yardstick Module 2 →