Thomas Fleming: [W]e need to adopt the model of the ancient Athenian democracy

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Thomas Fleming advocates sortition in the Daily Mail, even though, with the sordid state of the national character, he seems unsure whether it would do any good:

If Americans ever needed a clear refutation of Churchill’s fatuous aphorism on democracy–an institution he, more than any man of his time, knew how to manipulate to his own benefit–they have it now. If modern democracy cannot do better than the presidential candidates of the two parties, we need to adopt the model of the ancient Athenian democracy, which selected political leaders by lot.

Even a national presidential lottery would not save us. We have the leaders we deserve, leaders who reflect the American character. American voters like to complain that they are dissatisfied with the politicians they elect, but Bush, Obama, McCain, and Gingrich are the political face Americans see when they look in their mirrors.

Filed under: Athens, Press, Sortition | 4 Comments »

Congressional representatives are richer, Americans are not

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Gap Between Americans, Congressional Representatives Grows Considerably Over Last 25 Years

A new investigation by the Washington Post has revealed the financial gap between Americans and their representatives in Congress has widened considerably over the past 25 years. Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House more than doubled from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars. Over the same period, the wealth of an American family has declined slightly, with the comparable median figure sliding to just more than $20,000. A key reason for the shift is the soaring cost of political campaigns. According to the Federal Election Commission, since 1976, the average amount spent by winning House candidates quadrupled in inflation-adjusted dollars, to $1.4 million.

Filed under: Elections, Press | 3 Comments »

2011 review – statistics

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Yoram Gat

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

2011 Page views Posts Comments
Jan 901 8 108
Feb 2,085 17 392
Mar 1,437 11 156
Apr 1,499 10 115
May 801 11 73
June 1,048 16 104
July 805 9 110
Aug 994 6 54
Sept 1,120 5 103
Oct 1,930 7 151
Nov 1,205 5 32
Dec (to 23rd) 1,759 13 239
Total 15,584 118 1,637

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

The system reports that posts were made by 7 authors during 2011, with one of those authors making only one contribution. (There were, of course, many other authors quoted and linked to.)

There are currently 28 email and WordPress followers of this blog.

Searching for “distribution by lot” (with quotes) using Google returns Equality-by-Lot as the second result (out of “about 23,000 results”). Searching for “sortition” returns Equality-by-Lot as the 9th result (out of “about 82,900 results”). Searching for “kleroterion” returns Equality-by-Lot as the 10th result (out of “about 4,600 results”).

2010 Page views Posts Comments
Jan 288 8 30
Feb 242 12 29
Mar 417 7 28
Apr 252 5 16
May 344 6 18
Jun 259 6 15
Jul 324 9 20
Aug 372 7 93
Sep 550 10 38
Oct 704 6 97
Nov 1091 10 133
Dec (thru 23rd) 458 6 41
Total 5301 92 558

Filed under: meta | Leave a comment »

Lawrence Lessig: Democracy vouchers

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Jorge Cancio drew my attention to Lawrence Lessig’s proposal for fixing government.

We should have seen this coming: if McChesney and Nichols offered us a fix for elitist media by using media vouchers, Prof. Lessig will have us fix elitist government using democracy vouchers (book, article, interview):

So long as elections cost money, we won’t end Congress’s dependence on its funders. But we can change it. We can make “the funders” “the people.” Following Arizona, Maine and Connecticut, we could adopt a system of small-dollar public funding for Congress.

Here’s just one way: almost every voter pays at least $50 in some form of federal taxes. So imagine a system that gave a rebate of that first $50 in the form of a “democracy voucher.” That voucher could then be given to any candidate for Congress who agreed to one simple condition: the only money that candidate would accept to finance his or her campaign would be either “democracy vouchers” or contributions from citizens capped at $100. No PAC money. No $2,500 checks. Small contributions only. And if the voter didn’t use the voucher? The money would pass to his or her party, or, if an independent, back to this public funding system.

Lessig apparently doesn’t perceive that his proposed fix is reproducing in dollars what the system already implements in votes. After all, if a candidate cannot win without money, the candidate surely cannot win without votes. If the rich are influential in the current system because it takes money to gather votes, why won’t they remain influential because it would take money to gather voucher money?

Filed under: Elections, Press, Proposals | 15 Comments »

Rod Rylander: Thinking outside the ballot box

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Rod Rylander writes in the OpEdNews website, offering a proposal similar to that of Callenbach and Phillips:

Only a True Democracy Can Meet The People’s Needs; We Need a New Way to Select Representatives to Congress

Given the legislative paralysis we now see in Washington, it is all too obvious that American democracy has been undermined by the influence of party politics, money, lobbyists, and the shallow bread-and-circuses quality of our mass communications.

To remedy things, we need to think outside the box — and I mean way outside the box.

My solution for reforming our dysfunctional, corrupt Congress — specifically, the House of Representatives — is to replace members now tied to the unproductive, toxic system of party politics with ordinary citizens who are qualified but randomly selected. The procedure I envision is this: In each precinct of a congressional district, one person would be selected at random from a body of citizen volunteers who meet qualifying criteria set forth in a Constitutional amendment. The district-wide representative to Congress would then be randomly selected from the body of those picked at the precinct level. No politicking would be allowed at either stage of the selection process — and would in any case be irrelevant to the totally random system of selection. The Congressional term limit would be six years, with staggered selections scheduled annually. The result would be that in each successive year one-sixth of the Congress would consist of new representatives.

[…]

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Call for 2011 review input

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Yoram Gat

As we did last year (1, 2), I would like to create a post or two summarizing the sortition- and distribution-by-lot-related developments of 2011 and the activity here on Equality-by-Lot.

Please use the comments to give your input on what you think are the most mention-worthy events or essays of the past year.

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

Tom Hodgkinson: Boris ought to know his Plato

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Tom Hodgkinson, editor of The Idler, invokes Plato on the pages of The Independent:

[I]f Boris [Johnson] knew his Plato, which he ought to, having been to Eton and everything, then he would recognise in the protests, riots and strikes that have marked this year a sign that the people ain’t happy with the situation. He would also recognise himself as being a member of the short-sighted oligarchy – oligarchy meaning “control by a wealthy minority”. Reading Plato’s Republic, I was struck by the parallels with a typical cycle that he describes. In Platonic terms, it would seem that an oligarchy has taken over UK plc, and that this oligarchy has made too many loans, thereby pauperising the people, and now fails to see what is happening right beneath their noses: that the people are talking about revolution. The good news, though, is that a real democracy may be in store:

Plato writes that when the pursuit of riches remains unchecked, resentment breeds:

[…]

This is the situation that will lead to social upheaval: “Democracy originates when the poor win, kill or exile their opponents, and give the rest equal rights and opportunities of office, appointment to office being as a rule by lot.”

This is what the people want: a real democracy, government by the people, and not by a clique comprising top politicians and CEOs. […]

Filed under: Athens, History, Sortition | 46 Comments »

Rodriguez and DeNardis: Can Allocation by Sortition Resolve the Connecticut Education-Financing Impasse?

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Yoram Gat

A new paper about lotteries in education mentions some familiar names.

Abstract: It has been over 40 years since Connecticut amended its Constitution to ensure citizens a right to a free public education. Despite the constitutionally prescribed right, dramatic inequities in educational conditions continued to characterize the state’s K-12 educational system, especially between suburban/rural white and urban minority school districts. In the 1970s plaintiffs challenged the prevailing mechanism for allocating education funds with a host of court cases that tackled the thorny question of how much financial responsibility the state should assume to equalize the spending disparities between school districts. Prodded by court decisions, many formulas and approaches have been proposed by the Connecticut General Assembly in response to the various legal challenges yet the state has never fully funded the cost sharing formula nor lived up to the 50-50 cost sharing arrangement envisaged by some policymakers. The situation remains at an impasse with the latest court action, CCJEF v. Rell (2005), to be resolved no sooner than 2014 by most accounts.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Distribution by lot, schools | Leave a comment »

Nick Greiner spruiking about a citizens’ jury

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Yoram Gat

The Sydney Morning Herald, which seems to have a certain interest in citizen juries, reports:

O’Farrell dismisses citizens’ jury after Greiner jumps gun

THE chairman of Infrastructure NSW, Nick Greiner, has been spruiking about a citizens’ jury to recommend which projects the government should build – without having the approval of his board.

Sandy Olsen, the spokeswoman for the board of Infrastructure NSW, said yesterday it ”has not discussed adopting the model of using citizens’ juries”.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Press, Proposals, Sortition | 4 Comments »

Bergstrom and Varian: Government by Jury

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Yoram Gat

A 1984 draft paper (that apparently never made it to publication) by Theodore C. Bergstrom and Hal R. Varian is called Government by Jury. Its abstract is as follows:

We consider a simple model of social choice where the voters find it costly to determine their true preferences. Since the influence of an individual voter decreases as the group size increases, each individual finds it optimal to invest less time in contemplating his values in larger groups than in smaller groups. This suggests that a desirable social choice mechanism might be to randomly choose a relatively small group of electors to make social decisions, since they would then have more incentive think carefully about the issues. We investigate this idea of “government by jury” in a simple mathematical model and establish some of its properties.

Unfortunately, the paper makes the rather radical assumption that the interests of all the members of the group are identical, except for the fact that each is trying to minimize the personal effort put into reaching a well informed decision. Thus, according to this model, each person would rather have someone else make all policy decisions for them, provided the decision-maker has somehow been motivated to study the policy problems. This assumption limits the scope of the model drastically and makes any results irrelevant to most political situations.

Nevertheless, the paper is interesting for being perhaps the first formalization of a sortition-based government situation, and provides a possible starting point for richer models.

Filed under: Sortition | 3 Comments »

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