Equality by lot

In August 2025, we founded the Losdemokratie-Partei (Lottocracy-Party). The party naturally is not the goal. It is a vehicle for achieving democratic reforms toward a Lottocracy — once a full Lottocracy is achieved, we will disband, as our program explicitly states.

Accordingly, we do not present a detailed substantive policy platform of our own. Instead, we commit ourselves to representing and defending the recommendations of citizen assemblies, and to expanding their use. These assemblies are not only meant to decide concrete policy questions, but also to determine the institutional design of a future lottocracy and the reform steps leading toward it.

Why a party? Unlike most other organisations, we do not work within the existing system without offering an alternative to it. NGOs typically depend on cooperation with parties and institutions whose legitimacy and self-descriptions they cannot fundamentally question—this constraint, sadly, often applies to universities as well. A serious critique of the political system only becomes effective and consequential when it is paired with a concrete alternative—not just in theory, but in practice. Founding a party is our way of making that alternative tangible and actionable for as many people as this system allows (if “only” by voting for us).

We are deliberately confrontational at this point: we insist that calling this system a “democracy” is misleading. It is more accurately described as an electoral aristocracy. This sharp diagnosis is not a rhetorical flourish; it is the core of our argument. It allows us to stand out clearly within the otherwise very cautious and self-referential “democracy discourse,” and it appeals across the political spectrum, even if there of course are plenty who are not yet ready for our message.

Where we are now

We are around 70 members nationwide. Early visibility came largely through Ardalan Ibrahim (our current party head), who already had a YouTube channel with 2000 followers when we launched. Since then, Ardalan has been gradually moving into larger podcast formats. Beyond that, many members contribute in parallel: through party and personal social media accounts, behind-the-scenes work, and offline presence—for example by holding up lottocracy signs at street events. Overall, our collective reach has grown slowly but steadily. There is no illusion here: a lot more media work remains to be done.

We are amateurs in the literal sense: none of us has ever been paid for political work (which can be seen as an advantage, as this way we come with less associations with existing political camps). At the same time, we are not shy about seeking funding. Getting paid for political work is fully congruent with our critique—politics should not be restricted to those who can afford to do it for free.

This constraint is something we experience very concretely. In Germany, small parties must collect thousands of voter signatures just to appear on ballots. In Baden-Württemberg—the first and so far only federal state where we attempted this—the requirement was 2,000 signatures. We failed, not because of a lack of interest, but because most of us have jobs, families, and limited spare time.While 2,000 signatures may not sound like much, the hurdles are significant: voters may only support one party; signatures must be given on paper, including full addresses; and each signature must then be submitted to and verified by local administrations.

In September this year, Berlin will hold state elections. There, we will have more time and more resources to collect signatures—and we will try again.

Internal practice, lots, and legal reality

We held our first party convention in January, and it was genuinely great to finally meet in person, argue properly, build trust—and, of course, end the day together in a local bar. Community matters.

We also used the lot as a tool for deliberation at the convention. At the same time, there are real organizational and legal constraints. German party law does not explicitly recognize sortition as a democratic mechanism, and at this stage we want to avoid unnecessary legal risks.

More fundamentally, we make a clear distinction between state and party. A party is an instrument operating within an already distorted political framework. For organizing a state, sortition is indispensable if political equality and governance for the public good are to be real. A political party, by contrast, has different functions and roles, precisely because it is—by definition—a partisan project, even if this is rarely acknowledged. We have to manage our limited resources efficiently to have a chance at winning against our competitors.

That said, these points can only carry us so far, since leaders of successful political parties have, as per our critique, an outsized influence on politics and the state, undermining political equality. Here, part of our answer is to accrue as little power as necessary: by making ourselves obsolete as early as possible, and by categorically excluding the possibility of ever participating in the formation of a government. Another part of the answer is that our internal form of organization actually is not as important as it would be in traditional parties, since our program is largely set by institutions external to the party: Citizen assemblies.

This is all to say, at least for the time being, we deem it appropriate to simply stick to the “democratic” (electoral) internal organisation as foreseen by the German party law, while using sortition as a tool for deliberative sessions.

A note to sortitionists elsewhere

Most people still haven’t heard of sortition or citizens’ assemblies. That is latent potential—but only if organizational structures already exist when attention spikes. Founding a party early means that legal structures, visibility, and a concrete point of entry are already in place when moments of rapid politicization arrive. Otherwise, that demand will either dissipate—or overwhelm any existing structures instead of being channeled constructively.

Every country is different. But insofar as many (or most) of us still live in electoral aristocracies, this model is replicable.

If you are thinking about founding a sortition party in your country: do it early. Start small if necessary. Stay small for a while if that’s how it goes. Don’t expect it to be easy—but it will very likely be rewarding in many ways. For example, every so often, I pitch the idea to someone who has never heard of sortition before, and that person is almost immediately on board. And of course, for someone who would otherwise be rather lost, it is a joy to be part of this purposeful community.

And compared to traditional parties, we save ourselves a great deal of trouble by not having to work out comprehensive and detailed policy programs. 😉

Filed under: Action, Elections, Sortition | Tagged: democracy, elections, politics |