Ask Californians how to fix their state, and the answers aren’t helpful – because most voters don’t know the basics of how the state works, and their solutions are based on inaccurate information. This weekend, 300 regular Californians will participate in a different kind of poll – a Deliberative Poll – in which they receive extensive information about how the state works and have the opportunity to ask experts all sorts of questions. After learning and deliberating for three days and two nights at a hotel in Torrance, they will make informed choices about how they would address state problems. To preview this weekend’s event and to accompany Center for Deliberative Democracy director James Fishkin’s essay about the Deliberative Poll, we asked whether such a process could point a way toward reform – or whether flaws in the structure and approach will undermine its goals…