Posted on June 9, 2015 by Common Lot Sortitionist
Three Irish political scientists, David Farrell, Clodagh Harris and Jane Suiter, write in the Washington Post:
On May 22, Ireland became the first country in the world to introduce marriage equality through a national referendum to change the country’s constitution.
The vote was a world first in one other sense: Never before has a country changed its constitution as a result of deliberation involving a random selection of ordinary citizens. The government’s decision to call the referendum came because of a recommendation from the Irish Constitutional Convention, which had been asked to consider a range of possible constitutional reform questions.
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Filed under: Academia, Applications, Ballot measures, Press, Sortition | Tagged: Irish Constitutional Convention, Marriage equality | 4 Comments »
Posted on May 18, 2015 by Common Lot Sortitionist
A new book by Shaazke Beyerle, Curtailing Corruption: People Power for Accountability and Justice, describes grassroots efforts around the world to fight corruption.
In one of the cases described a randomly chosen group of regular citizens in Korea served as a ‘citizen jury’ that confirmed results of an investigation into political corruption. The outcome of this ‘people power’ campaign was that over 50% (58 out of 112) of the politicians identified as corrupt dropped out of the race, and of the blacklisted candidates who did run, 68% (59 out of 86) were defeated.
Filed under: Applications, Books, Juries, Sortition | Tagged: Korea | Leave a comment »
Posted on April 21, 2015 by Yoram Gat
Zool Suleman writes in the Vancouver Sun:
In her opinion article Creating a better community plan, Rachel Magnusson extols the virtues of a citizens assembly that is in the process of recruiting participation by residents of Vancouver’s East Vancouver neighbourhood known as Grandview-Woodland, anchored by Commercial Drive.
Authorized by Vancouver city council, this assembly is in response to a community urban plan process that raised howls of protest in 2013 when, after months of supposed listening, residents heard that multiple towers were to be raised in their neighbourhood, some as high as 32 stories.
With the citizens assembly, Vancouver city council is again embarked on a road heavy on process and light on listening. Magnusson and her fellow consultants, who are being paid $150,000 or more out of a total civic allotment of $275,000, are very enamoured by their credentials. Potent terms such as democracy, insight and community are rhetorically utilized to instil trust in the process. Trust is the main issue. Trust between the city’s planning department and the citizens of Grandview-Woodland is sorely lacking.
Our Community Our Plan, a citizens group based in the neighbourhood, has tried repeatedly to advise Magnusson, members of the planning department and city council of the pitfalls in this process, but to no avail, so in this space let us try again.
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Filed under: Applications, Juries, Participation, Press | 11 Comments »
Posted on April 4, 2015 by SimonPek
Founded in 2013, Democracy In Practice is a non-profit organization dedicated to democratic innovation, experimentation and capacity-building in an effort to contribute to government that is more inclusive, representative, and effective.
We present a case study which collectively examines the three pilot projects of Democracy In Practice’s student government program which ran February through November of 2014 in three schools in the Cochabamba area of Bolivia. This program involved replacing student elections with lotteries in which government members were randomly-selected to serve a given term before being replaced by a new group of randomly-selected students.
Program Overview
Implemented in three separate schools in the Cochabamba of Bolivia, the Democratic Student Government Program involved a dynamic and multi-faceted reinvention of student government. Most fundamentally, this reinvention involved replacing elected student governments with those that were randomly selected and rotated from within the student population. These governments of rotated, randomly selected students therefore operated continuously as standing decision-making bodies within the schools. Accordingly, the implementation of this program involved not only clear institutional change but also complex normative change, challenging conventional notions of governance as well as the regular practices and routines of both students and teachers. In this way, the projects explored here differ from other participatory governance initiatives that are typically temporary and limited to a particular issue.
Filed under: Applications, education, Elections, schools, Sortition | 2 Comments »
Posted on March 3, 2015 by Conall Boyle
Following the rejection of the Icelandic citizens’ jury’s conclusions on constitutional reform, it is disappointing to report that much the same has happened in Ireland:
[T]he people who were involved really cared about this thing and did everything they could to make it a model for new ways of thinking about democracy in the 21st century. There was a glimmer of hope that some kind of dignity was being restored to the political process. Instead all it’s really done is to polish up the sign on the gates of institutional democracy: abandon hope all ye who enter here.
The process showed that, given half a chance, citizens are not cynical and want to engage positively with their State. It also showed that that State, given half a chance, will make them feel like fools for wasting their time.
You can read the full article here: Fintan O’Toole: How hopes raised by the Constitutional Convention were dashed.
Filed under: Applications, Ballot measures, Press, Sortition | Tagged: citizen deliberation, democracy | 7 Comments »
Posted on February 27, 2015 by Yoram Gat
am.com.mx reports:
The fortunes of 3000 Morena activists, previously elected in 300 district assemblies, was determined yesterday in a lottery.
In this way the party led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador selected two thirds of its multi-member congressional district candidates.
Afterwards the Morena national council appointed outsiders – academics, human rights defenders, writers and rural leaders, among others – to fill the remaining candidacies.
“We successfully incorporated sortition into the process of selection of candidates. It is unprecedented, never seen in the history of our country,” said López Obrador about the lottery method.
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Filed under: Applications, Elections, Press, Sortition | Tagged: Mexico, Morena | 3 Comments »
Posted on February 3, 2015 by Yoram Gat
The Informador reports:
Morena chooses three thousand applicants to draw nominations
Party leader Marti Batres says district assemblies concluded without incident
MEXICO CITY (01/FEB/2015) The leader of the National Regeneration Movement party (Morena), Marti Batres, said that on Sunday 300 district assemblies concluded “without incident” the selection of three thousand applicants for the 200 slots of candidates for multi-member district deputies.
Among those elected, five men and five women from each of the 300 constituencies, there are housewives, students, professionals, retirees, workers, merchants, scholars, indigenous people and peasants, said Batres.
All those will participate in the February 23rd allotment process (sortition) for nominating candidates to multi-member electoral districts, Morena’s method to select its candidates.
More about Morena’s sortition process here.
Filed under: Applications, Elections, Press, Sortition | Tagged: Martí Batres, Morena, National Regeneration Movement | 1 Comment »
Posted on January 26, 2015 by Ahmed R. Teleb
The Chouardists are at it, this time with a new site (in five languages) calling for an allotted constitutional assembly. They explain their project in six “chapters” that you can see along with a visitor count on the left margin. Here is the main page followed by the first part. They have also included what appears to be an endless number of videos of Chouard and some other resources.
It is the explicit proposal which should rally the millions of citizens whose political impotency is programmed in the constitution.
Because it is not the role of the people in power to write the rules of their own power
“We want a democratic Constitutional Assembly, therefore randomly drawn.”
By reading the 6 chapters of this website, you will understand that if you want to change anything in the mechanisms of our current society, you will have to make this message your one and only claim: from its application the rest will follow. To understand the strength of this message, please take a few minutes to read through the six chapters of the website, they are very short.
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Filed under: Action, Applications, Initiatives, Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: Democratic Seeds, Etienne Chouard, Gentils Virus, Le Message | 12 Comments »
Posted on January 23, 2015 by Yoram Gat
Morena — Movimiento Regeneración Nacional— es un nuevo partido mejicano de izquierdas fundado por Andrés Manuel López Obrador que en 2006 y 2012 concurrió sin éxito como candidato a la presidencia de México representando al PRD, uno de los dos partidos más importantes del país.
En lo que parece ser el uso más significativo del sorteo en los más de doscientos años de Gobierno representativo, Martí Batres, presidente del partido, anunció en diciembre que Morena seleccionará por sorteo a parte de sus candidatos —los de representación proporcional (RP)— al Congreso y al Senado.
Martí Batres señaló que “Mientras los partidos tradicionales reservan las candidaturas plurinominales (RP) para asegurar que sus principales dirigentes accedan a cargos de elección, en Morena estos espacios se sortearán entre la militancia”, mencionó Batres, según un comunicado de prensa.
De ese modo, explicó, “se garantiza que hasta el más humilde compañero de base” tenga posibilidades de acceder a una diputación.
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Filed under: Applications, Elections, Press, Sortition | Tagged: AMLO, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Espanol, Martí Batres, Morena, Movimiento Regeneración Naciona, Spanish | 1 Comment »
Posted on January 23, 2015 by Yoram Gat
Morena – Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, National Regeneration Movement – is a new left-leaning political party in Mexico. Morena was founded by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), who was a presidential candidate for the PRD, one of the two major parties in Mexico, in 2006 and 2012 – losing both bids.
In what seems to be the most significant application of sortition of the modern age, Martí Batres, the party president, announced in December that Morena will select some of its candidates for the upcoming congressional elections by sortition:
The National Regeneration Movement (Morena) will select its candidates for proportional representation congressional seats by lottery, party president, Marti Batres, said Friday.
“While the traditional parties use the PR candidacies to secure elected positions for their main leaders, Morena will allot these candidacies among the members,” said Batres, according to a press release.
This, he explained, “ensures that even the humblest party supporter” can become a congressional delegate.
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Filed under: Applications, Elections, Press, Sortition | Tagged: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Martí Batres, National Regeneration Movement | 2 Comments »
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Equality by lot 