Equality by lot

am.com.mx reports:

The fortunes of 3000 Morena activists, previously elected in 300 district assemblies, was determined yesterday in a lottery.

In this way the party led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador selected two thirds of its multi-member congressional district candidates.

Afterwards the Morena national council appointed outsiders – academics, human rights defenders, writers and rural leaders, among others – to fill the remaining candidacies.

“We successfully incorporated sortition into the process of selection of candidates. It is unprecedented, never seen in the history of our country,” said López Obrador about the lottery method.

The description of the process and its democratic effects is moving in its simplicity:

The drawing of the candidates began at 12:30 pm in the Six Year Plan sports auditorium, which looked full, and ended at 14:45.

Against the walls organizers placed six tables, each chaired by a representative of the party’s national electoral commission, on which two spheres of metal mesh were placed: into one of these they would insert plastic spheres with names of women pre-candidates, and those with names of men pre-candidates into the other.

One by one, the representatives of the commission read aloud the names on the notes before handing them to one of the assistants, who placed them in the plastic ball and then in the lottery drums.

From all corners names were thrown. Jose Bautista, Mireya Bautista Ramírez, José Efraín Erasmo, América Libertad Beltrán, Rosalba López Gallardo. None was recognized by the crowd as a public figure.

El tabasqueño [Obrador] said the decision to draw at random 200 multi-member applications has nothing to do with political correctness, but a decision to break the mold.

Morena’s leader called upon candidates to seek votes from house to house, and condemned the call of some sectors to not vote. “We see those who call not to vote or to spoil the ballot as playing into the game of the mafia of power,” he said.

Filed under: Applications, Elections, Press, Sortition | Tagged: Mexico, Morena |