In February and March 2026, Public Democracy LA will achieve a historic milestone: catalyzing Los Angeles’s first full civic assembly. This marks the realization of PDLA’s primary mission—bringing sortition-based deliberative democracy to address real governance challenges in the Los Angeles area.

The LA Charter Reform Civic Assembly will bring together forty Angelenos, selected through a democratic lottery, to deliberate on a critical question facing the city: Should Los Angeles expand its City Council? This question has significant implications for representation, district size, and how effectively the city serves its four million residents.

The assembly will span two weekends—February 28-March 1 and March 7-8—allowing participants substantial time for learning, deliberation, and recommendation development. The extended format will enable deep engagement with expert testimony, multiple rounds of small-group discussion, and thorough consideration of complex tradeoffs.

The assembly is being organized in partnership with Healthy Democracy and RewriteLA. Healthy Democracy led participant selection through an equitable and transparent process: 20,000 postcards were sent to randomly selected LA households, inviting residents to apply. From those who responded by the February 6 deadline, forty panelists were chosen via stratified random selection to reflect the city’s demographic diversity.

This represents a watershed moment for democratic innovation in the United States. Los Angeles is becoming the first major U.S. city to integrate a civic assembly into charter reform, giving everyday residents—not just politicians, lobbyists, and special interests—direct influence over the foundational rules governing their city.

The assembly’s recommendations will be presented to the Charter Reform Commission, which has committed to bringing them to a vote. For PDLA, this full assembly demonstrates the power and viability of civic assemblies as tools for democratic participation, paving the way for future assemblies on critical issues facing Los Angeles communities.