Support for sortition from death row

Posted on October 17, 2010 by Yoram Gat

Mumia Abu-Jamal read C. L. R. James and made a recording advocating sortition:

Filed under: Athens, History, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Roger D. Hodge: “Speak, Money”

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Yoram Gat

The October issue of Harper’s Magazine has an excerpt from Roger D. Hodge’s upcoming book, The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism. [Copy of the excerpt is here.]

Hodge seems to have read John P. McCormick’s paper “Contain the Wealthy and Patrol the Magistrates: Restoring Elite Accountability to Popular Government“. He writes:

In an ideal system of public campaign financing, in which all political speech has been equalized by law, in which political advertising is banned and persuasion stripped of its commercial aspect—the corporate businessman and the millionaire (not to mention the billionaire) would still stand taller than the common citizen. In fact, as the political theorist John P. McCormick has argued, the wealthy are likely to dominate any political regime that chooses its magistrates and lawmakers solely by means of election.

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

The elected legislator’s burden

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Yoram Gat

In his recent article “Lot and Democratic Representation”, Alex Zakaras proposes introducing a sortition-based element into the US government. His proposal is similar to the one made by Anthony Barnett and Peter Carty in the UK (The Athenian Option). The new body proposed, with its veto power over legislation and term of service of one year, would wield moderate power – it lies somewhere on the spectrum between a full-fledged parliamentary body, as proposed by Cellenbach and Phillips, and the weak ad-hoc policy juries of James Fishkin and Ethan Leib.

Zakaras emphasizes the democratic advantages of sortition over elections – primarily equality in the representation of interests. He challenges opponents of sortition (quoting Robert Paul Wolff) to reflect on what their opposition “reveals about their real attitude toward democracy”. It is natural, then, to turn the tables and challenge Zakaras as to what his reluctance to grant the allotted body full parliamentary powers – to set its own agenda, initiate legislation and draft its own legislative proposals – reveals about his own attitude toward democracy.

In one brief passage Zakaras explains that the reason for “not burdening” the allotted body with the tasks of initiating and writing legislation is that its members would lack the expertise of career politicians and “would have virtually no experience assessing the likely consequences of different policy alternatives.”

Quite a few unexamined – and, in fact, unlikely – assumptions are packed into this brief argument. Each of the several counter-arguments below is, by itself, in my mind, enough to counter the reasoning given, or, at least, grounds for a thorough examination of its logic.

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Filed under: Elections, Proposals, Sortition | 6 Comments »

Yet another kleroterion reference in mass media

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Yoram Gat

This is becoming so commonplace that it may be time to launch a “sortition media index” instead of having separate posts. But, for now, here is another mass media reference to sortition, this time from the Arizona Daily Star. The two-paragraph pro and con analysis is pretty perceptive, I think:

to heck with voting

History magazine had a recent piece about an ancient Greek machine that was an early forerunner to the lottery system.

A kleroterion ensured absolute randomness in picking men to sit on juries and to perform other civic duties.

Presumably, a council of 500 would serve for precisely one term, ferreting out the answers to sticky problems.

Huh. A lottery instead of elections. Less posturing for the next race could spell less gridlock. There could be less likelihood of ingrained corruption. There might be a greater cross-section of the community instead of picks made by a fraction of voting-age people.

There could be downsides, too. Less institutional memory might strengthen the role of lobbyists or tempt those seated to reinvent the wheel every year.

The reference to History magazine is apparently with regard to an item which Google Alerts caught back in July.

Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Bert Olivier reads Joe Klein

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Yoram Gat

Bert Olivier, Professor of Philosophy at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, read Joe Klein’s recent post supporting Deliberative Polling®, and found it interesting.

Following up on Klein’s suggestion regarding the kleroterion, that opportunities for “deliberative democracy” be created on a larger scale along this avenue, could lead in the direction of greater democratic participation in the Arendtian sense of “action”. Such a process could only be salutary for democracy, as long as it is not restricted to matters economical, but expanded to include really tough political issues as well — starting at a local level, and then slowly broadening it to regional and national levels. Perhaps this way the meaning of “democracy” could be recuperated.

Filed under: Athens, Experiments, Initiatives, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Stephen James Kerr: ‘Against Proportional Representation’

Posted on September 12, 2010 by Yoram Gat

‘Dissident writer and independent scholar’ Stephen James Kerr writes Against Proportional Representation:

The result of such a radical constitutional change [i.e., a switch to sortition based representation] would be a complete transformation of the relationships between citizens and their representatives.

Citizens chosen for office by sortition would not be chosen for office by anything other than chance. They would therefore not “represent” a voter or a constituent in the way that persons elected to office can claim to represent others by virtue of their being chosen by the votes of citizens. Likewise, no representative chosen by lot would have a basis to exclude or ignore a certain section of the citizenry “because they’ll never vote for me.” Representatives would merely be statistically representative of the community from which they come, as they would be selected out of that community. Hence the relationship between representative and constituency would be fundamentally different under a sortition system from the current system of relations. The representative would remain an indivisible part of the whole.

Between the representative and the other citizens there would be no faithless promises to be made, no manipulative relationship to be established. Holding political office would be like performing volunteer work in the community, with nothing to be gained privately thereby. This is supposed to be the essence of civics in western liberal states, but the domination of politics by private interests has perverted it into a laughable cartoon. Nobody in western liberal states takes the ideal of “public service” seriously any longer. Politics is merely self-advancement wearing public drag.

The use of sortition would prevent the ambitious and self-seeking from gaining control over our institutions for purposes against the public interest. Nothing could be gained, and there would be no institutional framework to allow the self-seeking to take over our institutions for their own ends. Statistically, MPs would be representative of the whole society, just as a random sample used for polling purposes is judged to be today. Lawyers could go back to practicing law in the courts. Business people could go back to minding their own business.

Filed under: Elections, History, Sortition | 16 Comments »

“Representation and Randomness” in Constellations

Posted on September 6, 2010 by Yoram Gat

The September issue of the journal Constellations contains four articles under the heading “Representation and Randomness”. The articles are:

  • Representation, Responsive and Indicative by Philip Pettit
  • Reviving Randomness for Political Rationality: Elements of a Theory of Aleatory Democracy by Hubertus Buchstein
  • Lot and Democratic Representation: A Modest Proposal by Alex Zakaras
  • Random Selection, Republican Self-Government, and Deliberative Democracy by Yves Sintomer

Filed under: History, Sortition, Theory | 2 Comments »

Joe Klein: Deliberative poll for budget policy

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Yoram Gat

Joe Klein, Time columnist and “living incarnation of American ‘conventional wisdom’“, proposes to replace Obama’s budget commission with a Fishkin Deliberative Poll. Klein sees the DP as

a magical contraption that could take the process of making tough decisions in a democracy, shake it up, dramatize it and make it both credible and conclusive[,]

and concludes with an odd mixture of platitudes and populism:

I’ll bet the kleroterion would produce results bolder and more credible than anything Obama’s commission will recommend. “People are tired of the elites telling them what to do,” says Fishkin. Perhaps it’s time to turn that process upside down.

(It is not quite clear, however, how Klein’s proposal allows the people to tell the elites what to do, given that he is proposing advisory powers only.)

Filed under: Athens, History, Sortition | 11 Comments »

Two newspaper items

Posted on August 28, 2010 by Yoram Gat

The Irish Times carries a piece by Paul Gillespie about Citizen Assemblies and Fishkin’s Deliberative Polling: More power to the people may help politics.

The Jackson Sun, from Jackson Tennessee, carries a letter from Richard Ward which is worth quoting in its entirety:

There are other ways to elect politicians

A recent letter to the editor headline read, “It’s up to voters to fix America.” The letter was dandy, but if that succulent headline be true, then America shall never be “fixed.” Voting is the “adultified” version of the patently adolescent popularity contest. That’s all elections are. It is precisely what has gotten us to where American is today. Refusal to abandon proven failures is a definition of insanity.

Voting is not the only way to choose politicians. Voting is not even the most democratic way of choosing representatives who are for the people. Setting aside spelling bees, beauty pageants, boxing matches and other such non-logical possibilities, election-by-lot becomes the supremely democratic system of electing an open candidate in every election instead of by an anonymous, secret-ballot voter.

Too chancy? So say those who automatically discount the factor of divine intervention. Under a political lottery system — the Golden-Age Greeks called it sortition — any string of presidents, congressmen and/or judges would represent a cross-section of the whole population instead of the assemblage of ego-maniacal popularity freaks who are answerable only to their respective popularizers reigning over propaganda central USA. And election-by-lots is biblical, too.

Filed under: Sortition | 60 Comments »

Lotteries for Education now available

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Yoram Gat

Lotteries for Education: Origins, experiences, lessons by Conall Boyle is now available from Amazon or directly from the publishers, Imprint Academic.

The Blurb reads:

Lotteries are widely used to decide places at schools, colleges and universities. Conall Boyle explores many examples to find out why. The emotional turmoil that the use of ballots can cause to students and parents alike is graphically described. But lottery selection teaches lessons too; now we can find proper answers to controversial questions like “Does choice work?” This book will be of interest to parents, pupils and teachers as well as educational administrators. Any student applying for admission onto a university course should learn about the amazing weighted lottery for entry to medical schools in the Netherlands. There is a better way: it’s a lottery!

Filed under: Distribution by lot | 1 Comment »

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