“Lottery Voting: A Thought Experiment” by Akhil Reed Amar

Posted on August 13, 2015 by Common Lot Sortitionist

“Lottery Voting: A Thought Experiment” is a 1995 article by Akhil Reed Amar, perhaps the most influential Constitutional Law theorist in the US.

In the article Amar proposes using the lottery to determine representation only after a standard election campaign has determined the percentage of support each candidate has received.

In this case then, the ‘statistical representation’ (which he champions) would be only of those citizens willing to go through the process of standing for election.

This is much less representative — and less attractive to me — than eliminating campaigning altogether… and using only two parameters to enter the lot: 1.) registration for it, indicating a willingness to serve if chosen; 2.) a simple civics test (such as the Naturalization Test in the U.S.).

Filed under: Academia, Elections, Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: | 35 Comments »

A permanent allotted anti-corruption body is a realistic meaningful reform

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Yoram Gat

From an interview with investigative reporter Lee Fang about the recent retirement of Eric Holder from his job as Attorney General of the US and his resumption of his job at the law firm Covington & Burling:

Lee Fang: One of the perhaps most cynical and and most prevalent ways that you can legally bribe a government official or an elected official is to wait to give them a multi-million dollar check, not while they’re in office, but as soon as they retire. So if a politician helps a bank or an oil company, that oil company can’t directly buy them a boat or give them a million-dollar check. But if they wait until that official retires from office, as soon as they step out the door of Congress and find an employment contract with a lobbying firm or a big bank, then they can accept a multi-million-dollar payday; and so it’s simply delayed bribery, in my perspective.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, Juries, Press, Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Smith and Dumienski: Citizens’ juries could reduce Auckland’s democratic deficit

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Yoram Gat

Nicholas Ross Smith and Zbigniew Dumienski of the Politics and International Relations Department at the University of Auckland write at the New Zealand Herald, New Zealand’s largest circulation newspaper, arguing that using randomly selected juries to make some council-level policy suggestions may be a good starting point for organically growing a more democratic governance system:

A report by Bernard Orsman published in the New Zealand Herald on the state of Auckland City Council found that 88 of the 99 positions in the council’s boardrooms and executive teams were filled by “white men from wealthy suburbs.”

The reported demographic composition of the decision-making bodies in Auckland Council suggests that we are facing a potentially harmful democratic deficit. Yet, before anyone suggests quotas or other bureaucratic mechanisms aimed at diversifying the Council’s management structure, it would be good to consider a very different and far more democratic approach currently tried by our friends across the ditch: citizens’ juries as bodies that could breathe new, more democratic and vibrant spirit into our city’s old structures.

The democratic deficit evident in Auckland City Council is part of a broader trend in democracies worldwide, both at the local and national levels, which are increasingly seen as departing from the core democratic principles that they are supposed to uphold. Meaningful deliberations and political equality are the soul of democracy.

Increasingly, our electoral system is virtually devoid of the former and its outcomes suggest the erosion of the latter. Interestingly, such an outcome would have perhaps been predicted by the founders of democracy in classical Athens who were concerned that elections and campaigning contains in themselves anti-democratic and oligarchic seeds.
Continue reading →

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

Linker: An absolute democracy would assign political offices by lot

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Yoram Gat

Damon Linker’s argument against compulsory voting weaves in Plato and the Socratic argument for aristocracy. His reasoning is an interesting modernization of the classical aristocratic mindset. His point about the contestability of excellence is good, and he makes use of it as a justification of electoralism.

A democracy gives every adult citizen a very small say in who rules. An individual doesn’t have to prove that he’s thoughtful or informed to exercise that right. As Plato argued 2,300 years ago, this makes democratic politics exceedingly peculiar. We don’t take a vote to determine the medical treatments that doctors prescribe, and neither do we ask for a show of hands about how to construct a bridge or a building. And yet we think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask for everyone’s opinion about what policies our country should pursue at home and abroad.

That’s because in politics, unlike in medicine and engineering, the act of determining who does and does not possess knowledge and wisdom is exceedingly contentious. (One might say it’s a political act in itself.) So we solve — or rather, we sidestep — the problem by letting everyone have a say.
Continue reading →

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

An artist’s conception of the business-electoral complex

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Yoram Gat

Filed under: Elections | 48 Comments »

Nicholas Reece: The momentous success of radical democracy

Posted on June 28, 2015 by Yoram Gat

Nicholas Reece writes in The Age:

Experiment pays off: Melbourne People’s Panel produces quality policy

Citizen juries are one of the most promising innovations to emerge in the conversation about democratic renewal.

Melbourne’s radical experiment in democracy has reached a momentous conclusion, with the City Council announcing on Friday it will accept nearly all the recommendations of a 10-year financial plan developed by a citizens’ jury. That a group of 43 randomly selected Melburnians meeting over six weekends developed sound policy that is now being implemented is a profound result for anyone despairing at the state of our democracy. And it invites the exciting question, what’s next?

It turns out that having a plan “developed” over 6 weekends to guide the expenditure of billions of dollars over 10 years is considered a momentous success of radical democracy. What’s next, indeed.

Filed under: Applications, Elections, Press, Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: , , | 44 Comments »

Op-ed piece calling for a sortitioned Canadian Senate

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Common Lot Sortitionist

Claudia Chwalisz writes in The Globe and Mail:

Replace this archaic institution with a citizens’ senate

While calling for unicameralism would be a mistake – it would reduce the government’s legitimacy due to lack of oversight – the more radical proposal of “abolition” leaves the path clearer toward true structural change that moves beyond tinkering at the edges (such as elected senators).

Why not replace the archaic institution with a citizens’ senate – a rotating group of randomly selected citizens that serve as a house of review? The random group could be stratified, to ensure representativeness of sex, age, race, socio-economic status and regional diversity, matching the makeup of Canadian society.

Granted that this is only an op-ed piece, but I have to admit I am rather amazed that the idea of a sortitionally-selected federal legislature is making it so rapidly into the mainstream.

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

Short refutations of common objections to sortition (part 4 of 4)

Posted on June 7, 2015 by Yoram Gat

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

16. Why not use direct democracy?

“Direct democracy” is not a democratic mechanism – it suffers from much of the same fundamental problems of electoral systems.

Much in the same way that an electoral candidate has to have the backing of powerful people or organizations in order to become well-known enough to have a chance to be elected, so a proposition has to have powerful backing in order to become well-known enough to have a chance to appear on the ballot. Just like people have no real way to know how well a particular elected official represents their views and interests, so it is difficult to know what the effects of a particular proposition will turn out to be.

In addition, there is too much for government to handle for the cumbersome proposition mechanism to handle. Much of the business of government will necessarily be handled by professionals. “Direct democracy” offers no mechanism for controlling those professionals as they carry out the day-to-day workings of the government.

17. An electoral career provides training for statesmanship.

That is a very questionable assertion. An electoral career provides training for manipulation and self-promotion. A person habituated in such ways of thinking is not likely to pursue policy which serves the public.
Continue reading →

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

Short refutations of common objections to sortition (part 3)

Posted on June 5, 2015 by Yoram Gat

Part 1 Part 2

11. Elections are a mechanism of accountability. It allows the electorate to reward or punish those with power. There is no way to hold government accountable using sortition.

Using elections as an accountability mechanism is like a bank’s board of directors appointing a new bank manager for a 4-year term and telling him that if he steals the depositors’ money then there is some chance that he will not be re-appointed to run the bank for another term (but he will get to keep the money he took). A manager who sees his job as a means for self-enrichment is clearly better off simply taking the money. No matter how many years of service he can secure if he stays honest, his salary will never amount to what he can steal in a single term.

Besides, if the replacement managers are all as greedy as the current manager, what good would replacing the manager do?

In short, seeing elections as providing an effective means of incentivizing a government to promote the interests of the average citizen is hopelessly unrealistic. It is remarkable that this view is standard in both popular discourse and professional political science literature.

12. The training and service experiences would likely cause people to change their minds about various issues and in this way become unrepresentative.

As the allotted delegates study issues it is indeed to be expected that they will adopt views on matters that they were not aware of before, and occasionally will even come to have opinions that contradict previously held ones. In this sense the allotted become unrepresentative – they are better informed and have spent more time and effort considering various matters of policy than the average citizen does.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Elections, Religion, Sortition | 112 Comments »

Short refutations of common objections to sortition (part 1)

Posted on May 24, 2015 by Yoram Gat

1. It would be madness to appoint public officials by lot. No one would choose a pilot or builder or flutist by lot, nor any other craftsman for work in which mistakes are far less disastrous than mistakes in statecraft.

The problem with this ancient argument against sortition (attributed to Socrates) is that it implicitly assumes that there is some consensus around who should be running the state (those are the pilots, builders or flutists of politics). If there was such consensus politics would be very simple. Politics to a large extent is about identifying whose advice should be taken on which subject. The pretense of elections is that the voters can identify such people. This is a fantasy.

A small group, meeting together and discussing and examining matters in depth, would be able to do a much better job of getting the best advice than the citizens can do as isolated individuals. In fact, most voters already know that – they tend to be very disapproving of elected officials – the very people whom they supposedly selected as being the best suited to handle statecraft.

2. Average people suffer a great many shortcomings (some combination of stupidity, laziness, apathy, greed, selfishness, lack of education, lack of experience, inability to work together with others, etc.).

This dismissive view of the average person is offensive and unsubstantiated by the facts. Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Participation, Sortition | 47 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »