- Sharon Eubanks – Deputy Director, Colorado General Assembly’s Office of Legislative Legal Services. Primary areas of expertise include: fiscal policy, appropriations, legislative procedures, ethics, and the initiative process. She has been involved in the Colorado iniative process for twenty years. As legislative statff, she provided comments to initiative proponents thorough the review and comment process and provided staff drafts of initiative titles for consideration by the title board. Since 2000, she has served as a member of the title board as designee of the Director of the Office of Legislative Legal Services. Sharon also served as a member of the Initiative and Referendum Task Force of the Naitonal Conference of State Legislatures, which issued its report Initiative and Referendum in the 21st Century in July of 2002. J.D., University of Oklahoma, 1983.
- Michaele Ferguson – Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Colorado at Boulder. Ph.D. in Political Science, Harvard University, 2003. Professor Ferguson is working on a book titled Sharing Democracy, which crucially examines a dominant presumption in democratic theory that democracies can only work where citizens share something in common – a nationality, a set of political values, or the status of citizenship. IN place of this presumption, Ferguson develops a nonfoundationalist account of how we share democracy with others. Her interests include democratic theory, feminist theory, the role of truth in politics and the philosophy of language.
- John Gastil – Professor of Communication, University of Washington, specializing in political deliberation, elections, and group decision making. Much of his research examines how people make decisions on policy issues, particularly when given the opportunity to deliberation with other citizens. He received his Communication Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madision in 1994. He is the co-editor, with Peter Levine, of The Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effecitve Civic Engagement in the Twenty-First Century (Jossey-Bass 2005) and the author of Political Communication and Deliberation (Sage, in press), By Popular Demand: Revitalizing Representative Democracy through Deliberative Elections (Univ. of Calif. 2000) and Democracy in Small Groups (New Soc. Pub. 1993).
- Daniel Hays Lowenstein – Professor of Law, University of California – Los Angeles. A leading expert on election law, he has represented members of the House of Representatives in litigation regarding reapportionment and the constitutionality of term limits. Professor Lowenstein’s textbook, Election Law (1995), was the first text on American election law since 1877. He has written on such topics as campaign finance, redistricting, bribery, initiative elections, political parties and commercial speech. His LL.B. is from Harvard Law School (1967).
- Alice D. Madden – is Majority Leader of the Colorado House of Representatives, representing House District 10 in Boulder County. She was first elected in 2000 and reelected in 2002, 2004, and 2006. She is a member of the Legislative Council and of its Executive Committee, comprising the top leadership of the General Assembly. She holds a law degree from the University of Colorado and has practiced law and worked for the University and as a technical writer. She serves on several committees of the Colorado and Denver Bar Association.
- Shawn Mitchell – was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 1998 and reelected in 2000 and 2002. In 2004 he was elected to the Colorado Senate fro District 23, which includes Broomfield County, Westminster and southern Weld County. Shawn is an attorney in private practice. He was previously a legal policy adviser and top aide to Attorney General Gale Norton, where he worked on significant constitutional litigation. He is a former Senior Fellow at the Independence Institute and continues to write and speak often on public policy issues. He is president of the Colorado Chapter of the Federalist Society and serves on the Rocky Mountain News Board of Editorial Contributors. Shawn received his law degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
- Kevin O’Leary – is a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of California, Irvine and previously taught at UCLA and the Claremont Colleges. He is the author of Saving Democracy: A Plan for Real Representation in America (Stanford Univ. Press 2006). Both an academic and a journalist, Kevin is national correspondent for Campaigns & Elections. He earned his Ph.D. in political science at Yale University. Saving Democracy shows how it is possible to combine the traditional town hall and the Internet to fashion a new understanding of representative government that empowers citizens and bridges the enormous gap that now exists between the political elite and the average voter.
- Dennis Polhill – holds bachelors degrees in General Engineering and Mathematics and a masters degree from the University of Pittsburgh in Transportation Engineering and Public Administration. He worked as a City Engineer for several cities, then built up his own business as management and engineering consultant to governments all over North America. Dennis’ third career in the 1990s was in real estate and business finance. Now retired, Dennis contributes his time to to various good government efforts, including services as Chairman of the Board of the Initiative and Referendum Institute and as Senior Fellow at the Independence Institute. He has published two books and numerous articles on initiatives and referendums, including Are Coloradans Fit to Make Their Own Laws and The People’s Voice.
- Edward Ramey – is a partner in the Denver law firm of Isaacson Rosenbaum, where he specializes in litigation involving complex business and commercial matters and public interest and constitutional cases. Ed has tried several major constitutional and civil rights cases in Colorado’s federal and state courts, including a successful religious discrimination case against a federal agency, a successful constitutional challenge to a statute restricting the ability of minors to obtain an abortion, and a variety of First Amendment cases with issues ranging from political speech and campaign finance regulation to restrictions upon religious practices, regulation of federal prison inmates, rights of political protestors, and student and academic expression. He received his law degree from the University of Colorado in 1975 and an MBA from Denver University in 1981.
- Brandon C. Shaffer – was elected to the Colorado Senate in 2004 for the 17th senatorial district in Boulder County. A native of Denver, he received a BA in political science from Stanford. After service in the Navy aboard USS Hewitt stationed in Yokosuka, Japan, he earned his law degree from the University of Colorado in 2001 and practices law in Longmont. IN the Senate, he serves as Assistant Majority Leader, chair of the Judiciary Committee, and a member of the Health and Human Services Committee. He communicates with his constituents by publishing regular issues of the Shaffer Sentinel.
- Daniel A. Smith –Professor of Political Science, University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1994. Smith has published scholarly articles on the campaign financing of ballot initiatives and the role of special interests and political parties in directed democracy campaigns. His new book with Caroline Tolbert is cited in her bio below. His book, Tax Crusaders and the Politics of Direct Democracy (Routeledge 1998), investigated three anti-tax ballot initiatives. Professor Smith serves on the Board of Directors of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center Foundation and is a member of the Board of Scholars with the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California.
- Caroline J. Tolbert - Professor of Political Science, University of Iowa. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1996. Her publications include Educated by Initiative : The Effects of Direct Democracy on Citizens and Political Organizations in the American States (University of Michigan 2004) (with Daniel Smith). She is co-editor (with Donovan and Bowler) of Citizens as Legislators: Direct Democracy in the United States (Ohio St. Univ. Press 1998). Her forthcoming book (with Mossberger and McNeal) is titled Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society and Participation (MIT Press).
- Robert E. Witwer – is a member of the Colorado House of Representatives from House District 25 in Jefferson County. He serves on the Local Government and Capitol Development Committees of the House. Rob received his law degree from the University of Chicago and is Assistant General Counsel to Coors Brewing Co. He has practiced with the national firm of Hogan and Hartson and has served as legal counsel to the Colorado Republican Party. HI expertise includes campaign finance and election law.
- Laurie Hirschfeld Zeller – has worked in Colorado and national nonprofit advocacy and politics for more than 20 years. She served on the legislative and campaign staffs of Senator Gary Hart and Senator Tim Wirth and on other campaigns at the presidential, congressional and state levels. Laurie ran the Citizen Democracy Project for the National Civic League in the early nineties and chaired both the Colorado 34 Million Friends of UNFPA and the Denver World Affairs Council. At the Bell Policy Center since 2003, she has focused on political organizing around ballot measures related to the bell’s Opportunity Issue Framework, in particular the fiscal policy and tax politics debate surrounding the TABOR Amendment. She managed the group of 1100 organizations and institutions comprising the Referendum C and D coalition in 2005. Laurie holds a BA degree in political science from Yale University.
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