Kline: An incorruptible democracy of and for the people

Posted on November 4, 2022 by Yoram Gat

Victor Kline, a barrister from Sydney, is apparently a somewhat well-known person in Australia. In 2019 he founded “The New Liberals” party.

Kline has just published an article calling for replacing elections with sortition.

Winston Churchill said: “Democracy is the worst form of government — except for all the others that have been tried.”

For many of us, this “least worst” argument is getting pretty threadbare, particularly as we watch our democracy sliding further from its defining principles every year.

We know this is due to the rise of the professional politician, whose aim is to promote their own advancement to the exclusion of all else. And to achieve that personal advancement, they have to promote the interests of, essentially, a cadre of multinationals plus Rupert Murdoch. And a few other second-division players like big oil, the unions, lesser Murdoch “lookalikes” and a handful of assorted billionaires.
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Filed under: Athens, Elections, Press, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Should we choose our leaders at random? A podcast

Posted on November 4, 2022 by Conall Boyle

The Bunker is a podcast billing itself as “fearless, independent politics talk for Britain and beyond. We examine the big issues with humour and expertise, cutting through the claptrap to make sense of what’s really going on – and give you the fighting spirit to keep on keeping on.”

Its Nov. 4th, 2022 episode discusses sortition:

We’re not on a great run of political leaders at the moment – is the problem how we pick them? And what if we simply… didn’t? Rather than choosing between a bunch of self-serving, pound-crashing Westminster drones – could democratic lotteries be the answer? Brett Hennig, author of The End of Politicians: Time for a Real Democracy and director of the Sortition Foundation discusses how we pick our representatives, and how we could change it, with Jacob Jarvis.

Filed under: Press, Sortition | 1 Comment »