Equality by lot

YourParty is an attempt to create a new left-wing party in the UK. The attempt seems to be in a lot a trouble due to infighting. One of the causes, or perhaps the symptoms, of the infighting is a struggle around the idea of employing sortition for selecting delegates to the founding conference of the party. This idea may have originated in, or at least given a non-negligible push by, a proposal made by Edmund Griffiths.

The official website of YourParty says:

In November, thousands of in-person founding conference delegates will be chosen by lottery to ensure a fair balance of gender, region, and background. These delegates will have a big responsibility – to debate the founding documents, propose amendments and vote on them at the conference. The final decision will be up to all members through an online, secure, one-member-one-vote system.

This statement, it seems, represents the position of one faction of the YourParty organization. However, other elements are opposed to the idea. One of those elements is an organization called the “Alliance for Workers’ Liberty”. On its website, it has an article expressing its displeasure with the idea:

For democracy, against sortition

How and when, or even if, the “Your Party” conference will be convened is unclear as of now. But the main current proposal for it is “sortition” – that those who can attend the conference and vote will be chosen at random from the membership. We believe that this method, like the e-plebiscites proposed to supplement it, is undemocratic, and having delegates elected after deliberation in local groups is much better.

Sortition is vulnerable to people who have signed up for individual reasons and have no real day-to-day involvement in activity or discussion. Especially in a party as amorphous as this one, delegates being selected at random from the membership allows for landlords, say, or transphobes, to decide on its policy. The same person would probably not be elected by a branch.

New activists can easily be deflected by finer details of amendments, smooth speeches or technical points in meeting procedure. The best guard against that is to have experienced and capable democrats who know how to argue – and how to protest when the meeting is not being run democratically – and procedures which enable new young activists constantly to learn those skills (in a way that a randomly-selected delegate to a single conference can’t possibly learn).

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition |