True Representation Sketchbook—Sketches #1 and #2

Posted on March 26, 2025 by Ted Wachtel

Free Webinar: Lottocracy Versus House of Citizens: Contradictory or Compatible?

The Building a New Reality Foundation is featuring Brett Hennig and Alex Guerrero on April 1 at noon EDT (UTC-4) to present and discuss their ideas, and to respond to audience questions. An optional half hour small group discussion will follow the one-hour webinar. If the time is not good for you, register anyway because we will send all registrants a link to the recording.

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The following written “sketches” about the work of BANR’s webinar guests supplement my True Representation (2020) book and illustrate examples of how True Representation might be used in practice.

Sketch 1: House of Citizens for the UK

I first saw a video of Brett Hennig delivering a brilliant 9-minute TEDx Talk entitled, “What if we replaced politicians with randomly selected people,” in which he talked about “sortition” replacing elections and bringing about the end of politicians.

There is a growing global interest in citizens’ assemblies, with members chosen randomly like a jury, who collectively study issues and provide recommendations to government.

Hennig helps organize single-issue citizens’ assemblies as a way of demonstrating the “wisdom of crowds” but his end goal is to replace elected legislators with citizens chosen by lottery, free from party politics.

He is co-director of the UK-based Sortition Foundation that in 2024 launched Project 858 — a campaign and petition drive calling for the replacement of the utterly undemocratic House of Lords with a randomly selected House of Citizens.

The 858.org.uk website explains:

858 years ago King Henry II shook things up by introducing juries. After eight centuries they’ve more than proven their worth as the backbone of the legal system and now it’s time to put ordinary people at the helm in politics too.
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Filed under: Academia, Books, History, meeting, Proposals, Sortition | 5 Comments »

Aristocrats and oligarchs: Out. Posties, mums, nurses and neighbours: In.

Posted on March 22, 2025 by Yoram Gat

A story from PA media:

Demonstrators disrupt House of Lords to demand abolition of unelected chamber

Nick Lester and Abbie Llewelyn, PA Political Staff, 20 March 2025

Protesters have disrupted proceedings in the House of Lords demanding the abolition of the unelected chamber.

Protester Lucy Porter, 50, a primary school teacher from Leeds, told the PA news agency she was “campaigning for a house of the people”.

On the Lords, she said: “It’s a symbol of everything that’s outdated. “We don’t have a functioning democracy in this country.”

The leaflets, apparently modelled on an album by the Sex Pistols punk band, had written on them: “Never mind the Lords here’s the House of People.” On the other side it stated: “Aristocrats and oligarchs: Out. Posties, mums, nurses and neighbours: In. Replace the House of Lords to save the UK.”

The protesters said they were acting on behalf of Assemble, an organisation that campaigns for the Lords to be abolished and replaced by a citizens’ assembly.
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Filed under: Elections, House of Lords, Press, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Should a Citizens’ Assembly Complement the European Parliament?

Posted on March 20, 2025 by Yoram Gat

A new book with the title “Should a Citizens’ Assembly Complement the European Parliament?” has been published by the European University Institute. The book is made of a 30-page proposal by Kalypso Nicolaidis for setting up a permanent allotted citizen assembly as part of the EU governance structure followed by about 20 short responses from different authors including many who are known names in the sortition milieu.

From a cursory look, the for and against arguments are predictable and well-worn, but someone possessing a strong character and an iron discipline may be able to go through the whole thing and find some new ideas.

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An electoralist crisis in Romania

Posted on March 15, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Over the last few months Romania has been undergoing an electoralist crisis. The crisis was precipitated by the unexpected ascendance of the “far-right populist” candidate Calin Georgescu to the status of front runner in the first round of the presidential elections in November 2024. This round was annulled by Romania’s Constitutional Court.

The Constitutional Court’s unprecedented decision — which is final — came after President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence on Wednesday that alleged Russia organized thousands of social media accounts to promote Calin Georgescu across platforms such as TikTok and Telegram.

The court, without naming Georgescu, said that one of the 13 candidates in the Nov. 24 first round had improperly received “preferential treatment” on social media, distorting the outcome of the vote.

Needless to say, despite being dutifully echoed in the Western media, no evidence was provided to the public to back the claims of Russian meddling. Later reports seemed to be rather vague about those claims:

The European Union’s executive has opened a formal investigation into TikTok because of “serious indications” of foreign interference in the recent Romanian presidential election using the video-sharing platform.
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Filed under: Elections, Press | 15 Comments »

Shareholder democracy using investor assemblies

Posted on March 10, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Luigi Zingales (University of Chicago), Oliver Hart (Harvard University), and Helene E. Landemore (Yale University) write on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance.

It is interesting to note how in this context the authors are able to enunciate proposals and arguments that are more systematic and thorough than sortition advocates usually manage to achieve in the context of national or local government.

How should asset managers make decisions in today’s world?

Large asset managers, like Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street, have been quick to recognize the catch-22 they are in: good old value-maximization in the name of a restrictively understood “fiduciary interest” is no longer cutting it. But in turn any explicitly moralized or political use of their concentrated power puts a political target on their backs and subjects them to public opprobrium. Further, while asset manangers can provide expertise on how many dollars will be lost by pursuing an ethical or environment-friendly strategy, they cannot provide any insights, nor do they have any legitimacy, concerning whether the trade-off is worth it, i.e., whether the moral gains exceed the monetary losses, or whether the moral dimension trumps the financial one altogether.

One obvious way out is to offload the moral and political responsibility for value-values tradeoffs to investors themselves. In 2022, BlackRock launched Voting Choice, a program to transfer the right to cast corporate ballots from asset managers back to investors.

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Filed under: Academia, Proposals, Sortition | 6 Comments »

Juries in the political system: surely not?

Posted on March 8, 2025 by Nicholas Gruen

The British think tank Radix asked me to give an after-dinner speech to a conference of NGOs involved in promoting democracy which I delivered by teleconference.

Almost all democracies mix two approaches: representation by election and representation by sampling. But in modern politics, we’ve sidelined the latter, except in the judicial system. Elections don’t just select representatives; they shape the kind of people who rise to power. The system favours self-promotion, rewards spin, and turns politics into a competition for attention rather than a forum for governing. We assume elections will keep politicians accountable, but in practice, they reinforce a cycle where honesty is a liability and manipulating people takes priority.

Representation by sampling works differently. When people are selected by lottery to deliberate on political issues, they tend to engage with one another in ways that cut through party lines and ideological divides. I explore examples of how this has worked, from ancient Athens to modern citizen assemblies, and outline a proposal: a standing Citizens’ Assembly to sit alongside existing institutions, providing an independent check on government.

This isn’t about replacing elections, but about balancing them with another democratic principle—one we’ve neglected for too long. I mention a documentary on the establishment of the Michigan Independent Citizens’ Redistricting Commission which is here. And you can find the audio here.

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Hoping for the fleet to return from Samos

Posted on March 8, 2025 by Yoram Gat

In an impressive demonstration of the power of the electoralist dogma to twist one’s perception, Pierre Silverberg, writing in the Belgian La Libre, shares his belief that the ascent of the second Trump administration has a close historical parallel.

[Original in French, Google translation with a couple of minor touch-ups.]

From Democracy to Oligarchy

The parallels between the oligarchic revolution in Athens in -411 and the current coup d’état in the United States are striking.

In the Oligarchic Revolution, the Athenian elite decides to seize power, put an end to democratic institutions, and ally themselves with the enemy city, Sparta, to maintain their hold on Athens. Sound familiar? The historical parallels between the Oligarchic Revolution of 411 BC and the current coup in the United States are striking.

2036 years apart, both the Athenian oligarchy and the American elite present the individual and political freedoms acquired by the people as clear signs of moral and civilizational decline that must be acted upon. In both cases, the oligarchs present themselves as the only ones capable of straightening out the country and purging the nation of its excesses. And, naturally, in both cases, the oligarchy feels authorized to override the laws and subvert the system to the detriment of the people.

War as a context

These “oligarchic revolutions” also fit into a relatively similar historical context: war. The Peloponnesian War was a conflict that broke out between Athens and Sparta. Ideologically, Athens represented “progressive” Greece: its democracy was complete, each citizen enjoyed unprecedented individual freedom as well as the certainty of being able to actively contribute to the politics of his City. Thanks to its democratic practice of drawing lots, it is estimated that an Athenian citizen had a 70% chance of exercising a political role at least once in his life. Conversely, Sparta had kept its original constitution and represented “conservative” Greece. The City was a “gerontocracy” governed by two kings and a council of elders, the Gerousia. The people had practically no chance of ever exercising political responsibility and literally had to choose their representatives using an “applause-meter”.
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Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Press, Sortition | 10 Comments »