Adam Grant endorses randomly selected officials

Posted on August 22, 2023 by Nicholas Gruen

In an excruciating piece in the NYT (unpaywalled version), business guru Adam Grant endorses sortition, but in a risible form in which one randomly selects officials, rather than has a body of randomly selected people. This is all based on a psych experiment that showed that leaders chosen at random do better than those chosen by the group apparently.

Eliminate voting, and candidates with dark triad traits would be less likely than they are now to rise to the top. Of course, there’s also a risk that a lottery would deprive us of the chance to select a leader with distinctive skills. At this point, that’s a risk I’m willing to take. As lucky as America was to have Lincoln at the helm, it’s more important to limit our exposure to bad character than to roll the dice on the hopes of finding the best.

Besides, if Lincoln were alive now, it’s hard to imagine that he’d even put his top hat in the ring.  … A lottery would give a fair shot to people who aren’t tall enough or male enough to win. It would also open the door to people who aren’t connected or wealthy enough to run. Our broken campaign finance system lets the rich and powerful buy their way into races while preventing people without money or influence from getting on the ballot. They’re probably better candidates: Research suggests that on average, people who grow up in low-income families tend to be more effective leaders and less likely to cheat — they’re less prone to narcissism and entitlement.

Switching to sortition would save a lot of money too. The 2020 elections alone cost upward of $14 billion. And if there’s no campaign, there are no special interests offering to help pay for it. Finally, no voting also means no boundaries to gerrymander and no Electoral College to dispute. Instead of questioning whether millions of ballots were counted accurately, we could watch the lottery live, like we do with teams getting their lottery picks in the NBA draft.

Other countries have begun to see the promise of sortition. Two decades ago, Canadian provinces and the Dutch government started using sortition to create citizens’ assemblies that generated ideas for improving democracy. In the past few years, the French, British and German governments have run lotteries to select citizens to work on climate change policies. Ireland tried a hybrid model, gathering 33 politicians and 66 randomly chosen citizens for its 2012 constitutional convention. In Bolivia, the nonprofit Democracy in Practice works with schools to replace student council elections with lotteries. Instead of elevating the usual suspects, it welcomes a wider range of students to lead and solve real problems in their schools and their communities.

As we prepare for America to turn 250 years old, it may be time to rethink and renew our approach to choosing officials. The lifeblood of a democracy is the active participation of the people. There is nothing more democratic than offering each and every citizen an equal opportunity to lead.

Filed under: Academia, Elections, Experiments, Press, Sortition |

« »

15 Responses

  1. King Mob's avatar
    King Mob, on August 22, 2023 at 5:55 pm said:

    An “excruciating” piece? Jesus, you people are unreal. He’s a voice with a sizable audience and just got some traction in The Times. Credit where it’s due; this could generate some decent conversations and raise awareness about the idea generally. Then you curmudgeons can swoop in and nitpick him to death about how he should be doing it “this” way versus “that” way. I say, three cheers for Grant and anyone else using their platforms.

    Liked by 3 people

  2. Yoram Gat's avatar
    Yoram Gat, on August 22, 2023 at 6:11 pm said:

    I think the piece is pretty good. Not too methodical or carefully thought out, but striking an aggressive anti-electoralist tone and making some good points. Getting this message in such a high profile venue is great.

    Like

  3. Nicholas Gruen's avatar
    Nicholas Gruen, on August 23, 2023 at 5:11 am said:

    Thanks King Mob

    I sympathise with your frustration and have expressed it myself here before :)

    You are right that the guy has a big profile and that’s great. (I’m not one of those people who thinks that ideas get ruined in public by being misrepresented — that’s pretty much inevitable in the rise of any idea. In fact the opposite seems to be the case — bizarre claims seem to draw attention to a cause which is the oxygen it needs).

    I was commenting on what he proposed.

    I found it excruciating because it pisses me off that he’s basically not bothered to master the basics and puts about a model which can hardly survive contact with just the usual questions. “Really, we give the presidency and the nuclear button to any old random?”

    This is roughly how he got to have his high profile — having plausible-sounding opinions about stuff that you can’t really trust because he likes to say nice-sounding things without checking them out or trying to think them through.

    That’s a double pity. A pity that he’s like that, and a much bigger pity that this is the road to having a lot of influence in our infotainment democracy.

    If I was on a panel with him I’d say how terrific it is that he’s given the idea an airing. And of course how deeply grateful I am :)

    Like

  4. Yoram Gat's avatar
    Yoram Gat, on August 23, 2023 at 6:13 am said:

    Some responses:

    Professor Suggests Replacing Elections in US With Lottery System

    Let’s be clear: the concept is a long shot to the point of near impossibility in American politics, and it would presumably require basically shredding the Constitution. But still, it’s tantalizing to imagine not only picking better leaders, but eliminating the ugliness of election politicking and the bloated capital geared towards campaigning.

    https://futurism.com/the-byte/professor-suggests-replacing-elections-lottery-system

    NYT Columnist Proposes Banning Elections to Save Democracy!

    A Monday guest essay in the New York Times proposed doing away with elections in order to save democracy. If that sounds absurd to you, then it won’t make any more sense to you after reading the column. Since the New York Times poses as the pseudo-intellectual mouthpiece of the Democrat Party’s thinking, we can now say Rush Limbaugh was right: the left wants to ban elections. Although it may take a few years still for the idea to really gain steam in the mainstream of their party.

    Not only is this plot by Grant unconstitutional, but it’s also un-American! Having leaders chosen from some lottery isn’t a democracy.

    “When you know you’re picked at random, you don’t experience enough power to be corrupted by it. Instead, you feel a heightened sense of responsibility: I did nothing to earn this, so I need to make sure I represent the group well,” Grant explains.

    The solution to this would be to place a greater emphasis on civic education in schools and allow school choice and homeschooling, so children are educated and not indoctrinated.

    Our leaders are a reflection of American society and the education system as a whole. These are both institutions the left has corrupted.

    As if this piece wasn’t bad enough, Grant misinterprets what William F. Buckley Jr. meant when he said “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”

    Grant thought Buckley meant “That’s because the people most drawn to power are usually the least fit to wield it.” In reality, he was talking about not wanting to be governed by elitists like Grant who think they’re smart enough to completely reengineer society.

    https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kevin-tober/2023/08/22/nyt-columnist-proposes-banning-elections-save-democracy

    Like

  5. Yoram Gat's avatar
    Yoram Gat, on August 24, 2023 at 5:44 am said:

    More responses:

    Headline for NY Times guest essay changed after originally claiming ‘Elections are bad for democracy’

    NYT’s liberal essay headline altered after critics cry foul online

    Pieces published by both The New York Times and The Atlantic on Monday argued that America’s current election process is problematic and should be altered.

    The New York Times piece, a guest essay originally titled “Elections Are Bad for Democracy,” by contributing opinion writer Adam Grant, went so far as to argue that American’s voting system should be replaced by a system of randomly choosing political leaders by lottery.

    The Times removed the original headline for the piece and replaced it with “The Worst People Run for Office. It’s Time for a Better Way.”

    https://www.foxnews.com/media/headline-ny-times-guest-essay-changed-originally-claiming-elections-bad-democracy

    New York Times Op-Ed Declares Elections ‘Bad For Democracy,’ Changes Headline After Online Mockery

    “When you know you’re picked at random, you don’t experience enough power to be corrupted by it,” Grant added. “Instead, you feel a heightened sense of responsibility: I did nothing to earn this, so I need to make sure I represent the group well.“

    If the author had ever examined the histories of recent lottery winners, he might rethink that claim. Lottery winners are more likely to declare bankruptcy than the average American within three to five years of winning, with nearly a third eventually doing so, according to Next Gen Personal Finance. Money — like power — goes to people’s heads.

    The proposal to eliminate elections altogether for the sake of “democracy” further goes to show that “bad for democracy” means anything left-wing activists don’t like, from particular candidates to free speech, the Electoral College, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

    https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/23/new-york-times-op-ed-declares-elections-bad-for-democracy-changes-headline-after-online-mockery/

    Like

  6. Yoram Gat's avatar
    Yoram Gat, on August 26, 2023 at 9:57 am said:

    A follow up from the Philippines:

    Our elections endanger democracy

    For us, electing our leaders through the years had been an unmitigated disaster. On both national and local levels, our people do not know how to choose leaders for competence and honesty. Popular comedians and showbiz types top senatorial elections when we should be electing statesmen. At the local level, the dynasties rule.

    Maybe a lottery will improve outcomes… if luck is on our side. Bet on it?

    https://www.philstar.com/business/2023/08/25/2291092/our-elections-endanger-democracy

    Like

  7. Nathan El's avatar
    Nathan El, on August 26, 2023 at 12:55 pm said:

    I overall agree with Nicholas that in a widely-viewed article for laypeople like this, not being very clear that sortition should only be used for bodies of multiple representatives is probably a net negative, since it propounds an unwitting strawman which gives ammo to opponents as has indeed happened here, and even indenpendently of that will confuse the public and make it less favorable to sortition.

    Given that sortition is poorly known there is a tendency to think that it’s good that it gets any kind of press, but I believe that does not hold if it drives most people away, or even if it drives only a minority but a majority of a particular political camp away, as is extremely susceptible to happen for Republicans and to a lesser but significant extent similar constituencies of other countries, since novel “revolutionary” policies are precisely the kind of thing they tend to most fear. Look what eg activism for transgenderism has done by making this mistake.

    Of course in any case given that the main audience of the NYT is in USA, and given how hard it is to change anything in USA, and especially so at the federal level where it’s most important, ultimately it doesn’t matter much there.

    Like

  8. Yoram Gat's avatar
    Yoram Gat, on August 26, 2023 at 6:54 pm said:

    Nathan,

    Please send me your email address to my address shown on the blog’s about page. I’ll set you up as a contributor.

    Like

  9. Nicholas Gruen's avatar
    Nicholas Gruen, on August 29, 2023 at 11:51 am said:

    Thanks for your support Nathan El. In fact I’ve not said that it’s a net negative for sortition. If you look around at any successful social movement, occasionally being misunderstood or having representatives outrageously misrepresent your case doesn’t seem to do much harm. In fact a lot of progress seems to be made simply by people who scream blue murder and wildly overstate their case. BLM didn’t seem to come to any harm for having a completely half baked slogan of ‘defunding’ the police — something that a lot of African Americans were horrified at.

    In this case sortition as an option is sufficiently poorly known by the general public that I’m unconcerned FOR THE CAUSE that it’s such a dumb article.

    I was simply lamenting the woeful way in which ideas are discussed when someone with a profile can get that published when it’s so threadbare. (I’ve just had a piece on economics published in the FT, and they crawled all over it with fact checkers — good on them too. What a pity the NYT couldn’t have done as good a job.

    Like

  10. Yoram Gat's avatar
    Yoram Gat, on August 29, 2023 at 5:53 pm said:

    The commenters in the BoingBoing thread are overwhelmingly instinctively negative.

    https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/could-a-random-lottery-solve-the-sociopath-problem-in-american-politics/256090/28

    Like

  11. Yoram Gat's avatar
    Yoram Gat, on August 30, 2023 at 5:35 am said:

    A couple more:

    Is Sortition Having a Random Moment?

    I have long been a proponent of Legislative Service, a specific flavor of sortition where the upper chamber in a bicameral system is replaced by a randomly selected ‘jury’ on a per-bill basis. You’d serve for a couple of weeks and act as a check and balance on professional politicians who propose the legislation. It might also work well if you find your country in need of a revising body (Bibi, call me). The British government didn’t bite, and the concept rarely gets much press, until this week.

    https://ithoughthecamewithyou.com/post/is-sortition-having-a-random-moment

    Letter: Sortition, a better way?

    Are you fed up with our system of elections: low turnout, contested results, gerrymandering, endless campaigns, attack ads, special-interest money, and on and on? We who profess our love of democracy should look to its acknowledged source: ancient Athens. The Athenians used a system called sortition, whereby officials were chosen by lottery from a pool of qualified citizens. It prevented the corrupt practices of the rich and powerful from controlling government. It’s basically the same system we now use to choose jurors.

    What if we did the same with mayors, governors, legislators, justices, even presidents? Recently, other countries, Canada, Germany, France, Great Britain, Ireland, have begun to see the promise of sortition and to use it in certain situations. If you think that sortition sounds crazy, think about the current state of our elections and government. To paraphrase William F. Buckley, I’d rather be governed by the first 535 people in the Concord phone book than by the 535 people in the U.S. Congress.

    https://www.concordmonitor.com/-52081961

    Like

  12. Nathan El's avatar
    Nathan El, on August 31, 2023 at 1:02 am said:

    Nicholas, I actually do think BLM has suffered a lot from the “defund the police” slogan given that it’s viewed extremely negatively by Republicans and that slogan is one of the major reasons they themselves bring up. I do agree though that a single article is unlikely to have much impact whether positive or negative, but if there were many instances of poor advocacy of the sort I think it would become significantly detrimental.

    Like

  13. Point of View: Shoring Up Democracy | Equality by lot, on December 4, 2023 at 6:44 am said:

    […] Op-Ed in The Times not long ago [the author presumably refers to this. -YG] suggested that the ballot in this country be replaced by “sortition” — […]

    Like

  14. Sortition in 2023 | Equality by lot, on December 22, 2023 at 6:49 am said:

    […] included some fairly high profile pieces, with the most notable one being an op-ed in the New York Times. Among the most high profile applications was the French End-of-Life panel. The head of the CESE, […]

    Like

  15. Sortition in The Washington Post | Equality by lot, on November 8, 2024 at 8:15 pm said:

    […] little more than a year ago, Adam Grant offered sortition to the readers of The New York Times. Now Daniel Pink offers it to the readers of the The […]

    Like

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.