Equality by lot

Kevin Quinn, a member of the United States Marine Corps from Concord, New Hampshire, United States, writes in the Concord Monitor.

Most of us have been selected for jury duty, and for those of you who have not yet had the honor, look forward to it! Jury duty is determined through a process called sortition, which involves the random selection of a group of people to obtain a representative population in a given area. In more diverse populations, sortition allows for fairer trials as there is a lower likelihood of gross overrepresentations of certain populations.

For instance, in a case of elder abuse, if we used a system other than sortition, we might only have either elderly people running, to take up pyres and pitchforks for the alleged abused, or we might only have nursing home workers running, in order to protect those from their creed. Either of these, or a combination of the two, would not actually provide a representative population of the area in which the abuse occurred, and therefore would not give the accused a fair trial.

Some of you may know that our state legislature made national news during the past month. Kristin Noble, who is the Chair of the House Education Policy and Administration committee, had messages leaked where she made suggestions that segregation should find its way back into New Hampshire Schools. This is not the first time that our state legislature has made the news, either. In 2015, Warren Groen, in front of a class of 4th graders, decided to compare the talons of a red-tailed hawk to Planned Parenthood.

The House has also become a cesspool for the “Free State Project” to advance its agenda at a local level. The Free State Project is a group of out-of-state political operatives who have the agenda to turn New Hampshire into a libertarian safe haven. The number of representative seats available in New Hampshire has facilitated the takeover of our government by these out-of-state radicals. As recently as 2021, a closely aligned group rated 150 of our representatives with at least an A-minus grade in terms of alignment with their political agenda.

I am tired of our system being made a mockery of by clowns like Kristin Noble and Warren Groen, and tired of our system being abused by radical groups like the Free State Project. But our current political climate is one of bitter complaints and not one of solutions. For the House, I propose sortition.

Instead of roughly 3,300 people voting blindly on a candidate they likely know very little about, our representatives should be chosen at random in order to better represent our population. Obviously, disqualifications including felony convictions, certain disabilities and other extenuating factors would preclude certain members of the population from participating. But for the most part, I envisage most of the population being mandated to be in the pool available to be chosen as representatives.

Sortition is not ideal. People do not like jury duty for a reason. Finding out you have the equivalent of jury duty for two years is certainly a tough pill to swallow. But New Hampshire needs people like you to represent us. We need fewer people looking out for their own interests, fewer retirees with nothing to do and fewer opportunistic political operatives running our state. And yes, those people still will have a place in government with sortition. In fact, we need representation from those groups, but they should not be the preeminent force driving our government.

Our state is well equipped for sortition. About 41% of our state holds a bachelor’s degree and 94% holds a high school-level education. Our state’s employment complexion is much more mixed than that of our current House and we should absolutely have representation from teachers, health care workers and trade workers.

Our strength is our people, and right now our people are being exploited by our system. And unfortunately, there is no incentive for good people to join the State Legislature. Sometimes, good people have to be told where to go to do good in order for good to take place.

Filed under: Elections, Press, Proposals, Sortition |