Engaged California won’t survive and succeed as a project of one particular politician. It can succeed only if Californians embrace it as their own.

In this dark American moment, California has turned on a small democratic light.

It’s called Engaged California, an online, nonpartisan tool for Californians to deliberate with one another and engage their government.

At first glance, it might not seem like much. When you sign up with your email, pledge to behave with civility, and answer questions about your thoughts on the L.A. fires, it might feel like just another online survey.

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But it is a big deal. Because the U.S., and California, have done little to encourage deliberative democracy, especially online. Which means that Engaged California could launch a new era in which everyday people determine public policy themselves.

Before I go on, I should disclose that, since last year, I’ve been an unpaid advisor to the Engaged California project.

My role was to join Zoom calls, ask questions, connect my fellow advisors and state workers designing the tool to world experts in digital and deliberative democracy.

I confess that, even while advising the project, I didn’t think it would ever be used by the public. I was pessimistic even though, as an advisor, I was working with very smart people at the Carnegie Endowment’s California program and at the Berggruen Institute, where I’m a fellow in the Renovating Democracy program.

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My profound pessimism was based on two decades of personal failure. Since 2006, I’ve written columns and convened events to convince Californians to adopt the best democratic practices and innovations from around the world. Many of the tools I’ve encountered — from Tokyo to Munich — allow students to participate in, deliberate on, or directly decide difficult questions, often online.

Such tools could have been popular here in California, which struggles with governance but is a global leader in digital commerce. But local and state governments ignored my suggestions. So, I concluded that Californians were never going to embrace novel democratic process.

Last month, California proved me wrong — by debuting the first phase of Engaged California.

How did it happen? My fellow advisors (led by the world’s first cabinet minister of digital democracy, Audrey Tang of Taiwan) were brilliant. The state of the world, and its democracy, created a sense of urgency.

But the real revelations were the skill and creativity of the staff of the state’s Office of Data and Innovation. These state workers were awe-inspiring — they absorbed as much about deliberative democracy in six months as I managed in my first decade of reporting. And they were patient as government higher-ups moved around deadlines, and changed the subject of the first deliberation. Originally, it was supposed to be about social media rules for the young, but after January’s L.A. fires, the state switched the first topic to address the disaster.

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The launch of Engaged California in March was a historic event. California is the first state to make such a digital, deliberative tool available. It’s also the largest jurisdiction in the world to do so. Engaged California is still a small pilot, but more than 7,000 people have signed up for it.

I’m even more hopeful for what might come next. Planning for the tool’s future phases is still in its early stages. This could mean more open-ended surveys like the current one. Or it could do more. For example, the answers that Californians are giving to Engaged California’s open-ended questions about the fires might be used to shape a more specific question to guide deliberations of small groups of Californians.

Out of those small group meetings might inform a third phase — a citizens assembly, with Californians chosen by lot to deliberate on specific questions. Conceivably, such an assembly could produce recommendations to governments and other institutions that could be implemented, perhaps by regulation, law, or even ballot measure.

There’s no guarantee that these future phases will happen, much less succeed. And this project has challenges, including a thorny one. Engaged California wouldn’t be happening now without the support of Gov. Gavin Newsom — who wrote a book more than a decade ago, called "Citizenville," that discussed this model of decision-making. But Engaged California won’t survive and succeed as a project of one particular politician.

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It can succeed only if Californians embrace it as their own. For you and me, that means more than just using it. It means participating in it, giving feedback, and urging that it change and develop in response to such input. Around the world, I’ve seen that the democratic tools that last — like the Madrid-originated CONSUL or Barcelona’s Decidim — are monitored and managed by everyday citizens.

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That’s why we should all think of ourselves as advisors to Engaged California. Because this little democratic light of ours will keep shining only if we get over today’s dark pessimism and embrace such democratic tools as our own.

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.

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