The New York Sun casts sortition as a leftist menace

The New York Sun casts sortition as a leftist menace

Posted on July 21, 2026 by Ethan McCutchen

Anyone concerned about affiliating sortition closely with a US political pole should take note of last week’s New York Sun editorial [paywalled] entitled “The Newest Word From the Left — Sortition.”

Citing articles promoting sortition by the Nation’s Bhaskar Sunkara and In these Times’ editorial team, the Sun‘s editorial directly associates sortition with “the escalating aspirations of the far left.” It further implies the assemblies would be “guided” to support a progressive agenda.

Lest anyone fear that solons chosen by lottery would deviate from progressive orthodoxy, In These Times asserts that their deliberations would be guided.

The common concern about sortition costing voter power is then framed as a transfer of authority not from the elite to everyday people, as in the language of many sortition advocates, but from voters to “socialists” and “the left.”

Yet under a lottery, the voters themselves […] would lose a real say in their governance. Eliminating that check on the left’s power, though, might suit the socialists down to the ground.

Notably, the editorial does not treat sortition as a credible threat, but as a proposal that reveals the “lack of respect” for the rule of law.

It’s not our intention here to overstate the prospects of sortition being adopted. It is our intention, though, to underscore the vaulting ambition of today’s leftists vis-à-vis our constitutional system of government.

Filed under: Elections, Press, Sortition |

5 Responses

Max Clark, on July 21, 2026 at 7:31 pm said:

well, moving from ignored to hated :)

LikeLike
Simon Threlkeld, on July 22, 2026 at 3:31 am said:

Perhaps the writers of the Sun editorial believe the views they espouse would not be supported by an informed cross-section of the public on a fair and level playing field.

The quotes show them to have a preference for straw men and misinformation, over honest argument.

LikeLike
keithsutherland, on July 22, 2026 at 9:38 am said:

In his response to Mark Warren’s observation that participants in America in One Room depolarized by moving from Trump to Biden, James Fishkin remarked that Deliberative Polls may well be of interest to “Post-Trump Republicans” (the implication being that 49.8% of voters in 2024 were simply wrong/deluded/brainwashed etc). https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jos/pre-prints/content-impjos8

Conservatives naturally prefer incremental improvements to the status quo, so would be suspicious of Fishkin’s project for the “deliberative transformation of society” and Landemore’s paean to “civic love”. Sortitionists need to be scrupulously neutral and (pace Simon) we need to be aware that an informed cross-section of the public might well prefer the widespread implementation of the death penalty and the enforced repatriation of illegal immigrants. My own view is that the transition to sortitional democracy would require some serious constitutional safeguards to protect minority rights and ensure fiscal stability.

LikeLike
Jordan Rose, on July 22, 2026 at 8:15 pm said:

In general, there’s unquestionably going to be a correlation between those advocating sortition and left-wing politics, for a few reasons.

I don’t think it will make much sense to hide from this, exactly, as it will come across severely dishonest.

What approach I think is vital, though, is to make clear that we consider ourselves to have the same sorts of biases that all humans have, and while we obviously earnestly believe in our own political views (otherwise we wouldn’t have them), we also believe our own political views need to be checked and *combined* with those that disagree with us.

The goal, ultimately, should be to reduce the divisions between us and create a society that is inclusive to all, regardless of political affiliation. I genuinely want people with opposing political views to feel as though they have a mechansim through which they can pursue their interests without being blocked by partisan opponents, myself included.

A jury of randomly selected citizens need to be convinced of one side or another, and while I may personally believe that my views will withstand such scruitiny, that’s simply because I’m a biased individual, like any other, and things may simply not play out how I envision it. I need to do the work to convine others, and those on the other side deserve the same opportunity to convince me of their correctness. All design choices should reflect this.

I think there is truly bipartisan demand for such a system. The feeling of being silenced by the political elite is something most people can relate to. How we speak to that will obvoiusly be very important.

LikeLike
Ethan McCutchen, on July 22, 2026 at 8:46 pm said:

This will have little credibility coming from someone currently promoting civic assemblies in NYC, but one of the most important things we can do to avoid the dangers of tying sortition to any given party is to make sure we cultivate them in a diversity of political contexts. To date they have predominated in the US in cities and left-leaning states (with some important exceptions).

Fwiw, I suspect many of the elements of Landemore’s “civic love,” including the affection among deliberators, increased understanding of others’ perspectives, pro-social sentiment, etc, would translate smoothly into right-leaning communities, among which many are vocally concerned about polarization, loneliness, etc. But stories matter, and I’ve seen right-leaning readers put off by the book’s detailed stories that made civic love sound a bit unidirectional (even as she cited data suggesting it isn’t.)

LikeLike