An overview of the Lottery

On Wednesday, August 2, 2023, Unify Montrose randomly selected the community members to serve on the 64-person assembly to help solve the serious childcare shortage in Montrose. 

Thanks to outreach support from the City of Montrose, Montrose County, Montrose Recreation District, and dozens of organizations and businesses during June and July of this year, 222 Montrose County residents, from all walks of life, filled out a form expressing interest in joining the panel as a Delegate.

Using data from those forms, Unify Montrose employed a special software called Panelot to generate 1000 representative panels of 64 Delegates, where every panel roughly reflects the demographics of Montrose. Delegates were emailed a link to a list of their possible panels and could tune in live to watch the results.

(What’s Panelot? Developed collaboratively by computer scientists at several universities, Panelot is the gold standard for deliberation lotteries, and it has been used by scores of people’s assemblies in the United States and around the world.)

Here’s an example of what the potential Delegates saw:

Then, on Wednesday, August 2, 2023, a group of witnesses, including City Councilors Dave Frank and J. David Reed, Mayor Barbara Bynum, and representatives from local businesses, nonprofits, and countywide leaders, watched as the 1,000 possible panels were narrowed down to one with help from three Montrose kids and their parents, including Tonya Maddox, whose Our Town Matters team also helped to lead outreach efforts, and her son Preston, Rachel Schmucker and her son Luke, and Michelle Terry and her son Max.

The event was live-streamed from Magic Circle Players Theatre and featured the talented, local high school jazz trio, the Back Beat Band. A video recording may be accessed here