Debunking the Citizens’ Assembly

Posted on January 21, 2024 by paulnollen

https://www.academia.edu/113766495/Debunking_the_Citizens_Assembly

Abstract: Most designs of “Citizen Assemblies” appear to establish a representational system without being able to live up to an acceptable explicitly or implicitly claimed representativeness and inclusiveness, or to make a (scientifically) acceptable attempt to demonstrate them. It is a representational system with representativeness based solely on “everyone having an equal chance of being selected”, and even that is not always realized. Then again, in some cases the representativeness or inclusiveness is very targeted and limited. Also, the design seldom has a reasoned relationship to the area of application. Most designs are vulnerable, to very vulnerable, to manipulation. The selection method and choice of operation practices is in the hands of specialists or specialized companies where sortition is just the generic name and is far from the sortition system with the values we spontaneously assign to it such as reliability and fairness. Independent evaluation system/application area/result is virtually non-existent.

Filed under: Sortition | Leave a comment »

Clay Shentrup: Election by Jury

Posted on January 21, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Clay Shentrup wrote to announce the Election by Jury website he created.

If you were accused of a crime, who would you want deciding your fate?

  • A panel of randomly selected jurors, all of whom have spent multiple weeks sitting in a courtroom, listening to all the relevant facts and arguments put forward by both sides
  • A popular vote open to hundreds of thousands of people in your county, the vast majority of whom only know a few sound bites about the case, which they heard from a biased and one-sided source

The premise behind “Election by Jury” is simple: we believe that our government, just like the criminal justice system, will function better if our representatives are elected after weeks of deliberation by a panel of randomly selected jurors. These jurors would hear from the candidates and their expert-witnesses, deliberate among themselves, and cast their votes in secret.

Here are a few of the most compelling benefits of our proposal:

  1. An “electorate” that is better informed
  2. Better ways of combating misinformation
  3. Breaking away from echo-chambers

Filed under: Elections, Proposals, Sortition | 10 Comments »