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.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, Press | 16 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.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Proposals, Sortition | 7 Comments »

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 »

Ariely advocates for allotted citizen assemblies

Posted on February 28, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Dan Ariely is a fairly prominent Israeli-American behavioral economist who authored some best-selling popular books (and was also involved in dubious research).

Ynet, the website of the popular Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, has now published an opinion piece by Ariely [Hebrew] in which Ariely proposes allotted citizen assemblies as a way for overcoming divisions in the Israeli public.

Excerpts from the piece [Google translation]:

My proposal for a new Israeli democracy

It already works in the world, why not here? Imagine a situation where one day you receive a letter from the State of Israel. The letter informs you that you have been selected, along with 299 other citizens, to participate in a deep thinking process on one of the biggest problems facing the country. Then, the experts arrive – a variety of voices from all ends of the spectrum

Why is this so important now?

In Israel, the political, social, and values ​​crisis has reached a boiling point. Each side seems convinced that the other is endangering the country. Dialogue has become toxic, and the ability to listen has almost disappeared.

But research shows that if you put people from all groups in a room, give them time to learn about each other and understand the data, they will be able to reach compromises – and, no less importantly, begin to see each other as human beings.

If all you know about your political opponents comes from social media and the belligerent headlines in the media, it’s very easy to think they’re enemies. But when people sit together, really listen, and study the data before forming an opinion – the magic happens. This doesn’t mean that the gaps will disappear, but a process will be created in which people can cooperate and seek common solutions.

Are we ready to think differently about democracy?

I recently met with a German expert who studies citizens’ committees. He told me that there is a widespread perception in representative democracy that once every four years we go to the polls, and that this is what is considered taking civic responsibility. But according to him, the truth is exactly the opposite – going to vote once every four years is not taking responsibility, but giving it up.

A true democracy, he explained, is a situation in which citizens actively participate in public life, frequently and in depth. Not just on social media, not just in protests, but in orderly processes where they can learn, understand and influence. And what’s more – citizen committees are one of the best ways to do this.
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Filed under: Academia, Press, Sortition | Tagged: | Leave a comment »

Henry George’s analysis of electoralism, with a side note on sortition

Posted on February 22, 2025 by Yoram Gat

From Book X, Chapter IV of Progress and Poverty (1879) by Henry George:

Where there is anything like an equal distribution of wealth—that is to say, where there is general patriotism, virtue, and intelligence—the more democratic the government the better it will be; but where there is gross inequality in the distribution of wealth, the more democratic the government the worse it will be; for, while rotten democracy may not in itself be worse than rotten autocracy, its effects upon national character will be worse. To give the suffrage to tramps, to paupers, to men to whom the chance to labor is a boon, to men who must beg, or steal, or starve, is to invoke destruction. To put political power in the hands of men embittered and degraded by poverty is to tie firebrands to foxes and turn them loose amid the standing corn; it is to put out the eyes of a Samson and to twine his arms around the pillars of national life.

Even the accidents of hereditary succession or of selection by lot, the plan of some of the ancient republics, may sometimes place the wise and just in power; but in a corrupt democracy the tendency is always to give power to the worst. Honesty and patriotism are weighted, and unscrupulousness commands success. The best gravitate to the bottom, the worst float to the top, and the vile will only be ousted by the viler. While as national character must gradually assimilate to the qualities that win power, and consequently respect, that demoralization of opinion goes on which in the long panorama of history we may see over and over again transmuting races of freemen into races of slaves.

Filed under: Books, Elections, Sortition | 2 Comments »

The French School of Athens builds a kleroterion

Posted on February 8, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Kathimerini reports about a project of the French School of Athens involving building a full size marble reconstruction of an Athenian kleroterion:

It is made of marble and weighs about 300 kilos. It is 1.20 meters tall, but on its wooden base it’s the height of a tall adult. And while it looks like an inscribed column, if you get close up, you’ll find that it has many rows of slots in a vertical and horizontal arrangement. What are they for? To receive wooden tiles with the names of citizens who, through a special process, will be selected for public office, or not, at least until their luck is tested again.

It is a faithful copy of an ancient kleroterion, a randomization device similar to the one that the Athenians of the 5th and especially the 4th century BC used to select citizens to be lawmakers, state officials and jury members.

“The best method of democratic selection was to draw lots,” archaeologist and historian Veronique Chankowski, director of the French School of Athens, who coordinated the construction and study of the ancient lottery device, tells Kathimerini. “A person was selected not because they belonged to a specific family or social network, nor because they were rich. This machine chose them.”

Filed under: Academia, Athens, Press, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Ordinary people vs. explanations

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Responding to a recent discussion regarding Roger Hallam and Extinction Rebelion, commenters emphasized the need to distance “ourselves” from such extremists, potentially “manipulated by malign actors”. An X post from December had this to say:

“Ordinary people selected at random” aka sortition is explicitly against the idea that explanations can discern between better and worse policies. It’s nuts!

Filed under: Mass action, Sortition | 2 Comments »

The New Republic: There’s little doubt that sortition beats election hands down

Posted on January 29, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Roger Hallam, “a co-founder and strategic mastermind of the civil resistance groups Extinction Rebellion (often called XR) and Just Stop Oil”, and who is also serving “five years in prison for ‘conspiracy to cause a public nuisance'” is the protagonist of a supportive article in The New Republic. The article makes a very sympathetic presentation of Hallam’s anti-electoral and pro-sortition ideas:

Hallam calls our current moment a “pre-revolutionary period.” Such eras have arisen throughout history—if never on such a grand scale—and they unfold according to a distinct logic. One of the first casualties is moderation. “The center does not hold,” Hallam said. “You saw this before the Nazis, you saw it before the Bolsheviks, and you’re seeing it at the moment in slow motion in Western democracies.” It’s easy to miss the signs, because “the center still has institutional power,” he added. “In other words, like it’s a zombie space. It’s dead, but it hasn’t yet been pushed over by the new.”

Under such conditions, wrenching paradigm shifts are inevitable. The only question, Hallam suggested, is whether we submit to authoritarianism, as many Americans seem all too eager to do, or embrace a genuinely pro-social revolutionary alternative. While it would have been comforting to hit the snooze button with four more years of Biden-style liberalism—a sound approach in simpler times—when survival hangs in the balance, there are distinct advantages to being awake.

The centerpiece of Hallam’s plan is a radical reinvention of democracy aimed at turning elections into a historical relic. Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Press, Sortition | 14 Comments »

Proposal: Allot White House press passes among all citizens

Posted on January 8, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Martin Gurri fulminates in the New York Post against the way Joe Biden’s mental decline was denied and downplayed over his term as president. Gurri points out that the White House press corps took an active part in the deception. Presumably this collaboration is a result of the fact that members of the corps are selected for their friendliness to the White House occupant. Sortition would be a remedy.

Reporters have special passes to the White House. They accompanied Biden on his trips, often on Air Force One. They saw what Appel saw: a president who “can’t say sentences.”

And they chose to think nothing of it, to say nothing, to remain at best incurious and at worst to lie and so curry favor with the mighty.

The news media’s corruption is too evident to need elaboration. But there ought to be consequences.

Here’s a modest proposal: Disband the White House press corps. Cast them out like money-changers from the temple. Select those American citizens entitled to question the president by lot, the way the Athenians chose their public officials.

Reference to Gurri’s article was sent to me by Roger Knights.

Filed under: Elections, Press, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Equality by Lot 2024 statistics

Posted on December 28, 2024 by Yoram Gat

Below are some statistics about the 15th year of Equality-by-Lot. Comparable numbers for last year can be found here.

2024 Page views Posts Comments
Jan 2,580 16 56
Feb 2,192 9 13
Mar 3,097 16 99
Apr 3,244 10 130
May 2,667 9 91
June 2,775 6 77
July 3,015 7 20
Aug 2,397 6 17
Sept 2,506 6 26
Oct 3,474 15 78
Nov 2,863 12 41
Dec (to 28th) 11,791 5 20
Total 42,601 117 668

Note that page views do not include visits by logged-in contributors – the WordPress system does not count those visits.

Posts were made by 11 authors during 2024. (There were, of course, many other authors quoted and linked to.) This blog currently has 567 subscribers. (The system no longer seems to differentiate between WordPress subscribers and e-mail subscribers.)

Searching for “distribution by lot” (with quotes) using Google returns Equality-by-Lot as the 3rd result (out of “about 20,400 results”). Equality-by-Lot is on the fifth page of results when searching for “sortition” (out of “about 248,000 results”). Asking ChatGPT “what are good websites about sortition?” does not return (for me, at least) Equality-by-Lot as one of the recommendations.

Happy holidays and a happy new year to Equality-by-Lot readers, commenters and posters. Keep up the good fight for democracy!

Filed under: Distribution by lot, meta, Sortition | 1 Comment »

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