Sortition in Government Series

Posted on December 10, 2020 by Owen Shaffer

Terry Bouricius will be leading a series of presentations on applying sortition to government at the next several monthly meetings of Democracy Without Elections, formerly the United States Chapter of the Sortition Foundation. The next monthly meeting will be held online on Tuesday 15 December at 9pm Eastern, 6 Pacific (US time). Terry’s topic is “Underlying legitimacy of election vs. sortition,” and further described as…

“Both election and sortition claim to be representative forms of democracy, but they have very different historic roots and very different bases for legitimacy. The different methods are likely to deliver very different policy outcomes as well. Law making using sortition dates back thousands of years, and is recently undergoing a resurgence.”

The meeting includes reports from Interest Groups and from our new Board of Directors. Contact Owen for access to the meeting.

Future online meeting presentations in this series will include discussions on

  • Why elections are a bad tool for running a democracy
  • Sortition representation and accountability
  • Why having one chamber elected and one chamber by sortition is problematic
  • How to organize law-making with sortition
  • Aspects of Sortition: impartiality, anti-corruption, representativeness, diversity benefits
  • Sortition role in the executive branch
  • Transition strategies to sortition democracy

Filed under: Action, Sortition | Tagged: | 8 Comments »

Stakeholders! Empowerment! Holacritic! Nodes! Doughnut Economics! Flatpack Democracy! Sortition! Curation!

Posted on December 9, 2020 by Yoram Gat

The Brixton Buzz is “Brixton’s biggest and most comprehensive news , features and listings site”. It has “long rallied against the divisive, exclusive and downright incomprehensible jargon that self-elected community representatives The Brixton Project have been spouting recently”. It turns out that “sortition” is part of this bombastic jargon.

Some excerpts from the Brixton Buzz article:

The Brixton Project – the ‘community group’ who intentionally exclude most of their audience

The Brixton Project promises:

Stakeholders! Empowerment! Holacritic! Nodes! Doughnut Economics! Flatpack Democracy! Sortition! Curation! All resulting in: Inclusive and Cohesive Community Agency!​

The Brixton Project has been at pains to underline its commitment to inclusiveness across all the people of Brixton.

But – according to the Fleischer-Kincaid grade index, a widely accepted measure of comprehensibility – BP’s prose requires graduate-level comprehension, and is intelligible to only about 30% of the general public.

BP’s prose is a trifecta of gobbledegook: a turgid pseudo-intellectual blend of civic bureaucratese, cultural studies academic jargon and architectural-theoretic gibberish, which is pretty intimidating for anyone with limited or average English proficiency.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Press, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Democracy Without Elections Board Selected by Lottery

Posted on December 3, 2020 by Yoram Gat

A news release by Democracy Without Elections.

Directors for national board selected by lottery

The advocacy group “Democracy Without Elections” has decided to practice what it preaches and select its entire Board of Directors by lottery. Using a lottery, Democracy Without Elections (www.DemocracyWithoutElections.org) is able to form a diverse board and include input from less active members. The new Board, with Directors from across the country, will meet online later this month.

Democracy Without Elections is a grassroots member-driven organization that promotes better decision-making across all levels of government and in organizations ranging from Boards of Directors to student government. The use of democratic lotteries to select the decision-makers coupled with deliberation as the process to make the decisions are the hallmark of the group.

The organization specifically advocates for democratic lotteries to be used to select members in legislative bodies like Congress. The group also supports making fundamental changes in the way those bodies operate: replacing lobbyists, coalitions and partisan politics with deliberation.

Democracy Without Elections is a proponent of citizens’ assemblies as well. Citizens’ Assemblies are lottery-selected deliberative groups which make recommendations to legislative bodies. Each citizens’ assembly is tasked with one challenging issue like abortion or a specific ballot initiative.

The organization has members from Alaska to Florida and from New England to California. We welcome new members who can join us at www.DemocracyWithoutElections.org. We hold monthly online meetings that include relevant guest speakers and reports from Interest Groups.

Filed under: Applications, Organizing, Sortition | 3 Comments »

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