Equality by Lot 2025 statistics

Posted on December 27, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Below are some statistics about the 16th year of Equality-by-Lot. Comparable numbers for last year can be found here.

2025 Visitors Posts Comments
Jan 778 7 28
Feb 708 6 22
Mar 1,249 7 41
Apr 1,639 8 48
May 1,985 7 32
June 1,739 3 13
July 2,232 4 3
Aug 5,550 6 28
Sept 10,673 4 25
Oct 11,760 4 48
Nov 16,893 9 49
Dec (to 27th) 17,363 6 14
Total 72,569 71 351

This year’s number of page views statistics as reported by the WordPress system show very large spikes that probably indicate some sort of automated activity that is not being filtered by the WordPress data gathering. The bar chart produced by the system is completely distorted by these spikes and I therefore do not post it this year. I switched to tabulating “visitors” rather than “page views”, since the former seem somewhat more stable. I am not sure how “visitors” are counted and how reliable the counting is. In any case, comparison with viewership statistics of previous years may not make sense.

Posts were made by 12 authors during 2025. (There were, of course, many other authors quoted and linked to.) This blog currently has 398 are e-mail subscribers and 152 WordPress subscribers.

Searching for “distribution by lot” (with quotes) using Google returns Equality-by-Lot as the 5th result. Equality-by-Lot is on the bottom of the first page of results (9th link) when searching for “sortition“. (Google no longer provides an estimate of the total number of results for the search terms.) 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: History, meta, Sortition | 1 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 »

Equality by Lot 2023 statistics

Posted on December 24, 2023 by Yoram Gat

Below are some statistics about the 14th year of Equality-by-Lot. Comparable numbers for last year can be found here.

2023 Page views Posts Comments
Jan 2,611 7 12
Feb 2,845 10 68
Mar 3,343 9 68
Apr 3,274 9 27
May 2,417 9 26
June 2,558 6 45
July 2,502 5 14
Aug 3,604 4 74
Sept 3,020 9 64
Oct 2,894 10 28
Nov 2,118 8 9
Dec (to 24th) 1,781 7 7
Total 32,967 93 442

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

Posts were made by 12 authors during 2023. (There were, of course, many other authors quoted and linked to.)

This blog currently has 161 email followers and 362 WordPress followers. (As part of the upheaval at Twitter/X, automatic publishing to Twitter has been discontinued and “Twitter followers” are no longer being counted.)

Searching for “distribution by lot” (with quotes) using Google returns Equality-by-Lot as the 2nd result (out of “about 80,000 results”), but it is not among the first few dozen results when searching for “sortition” (out of “about 3,740,000 results”). On the other hand, asking ChatGPT “what are good websites about sortition?” does 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 »

The Trans-Atlanticist Podcast Features Sortition

Posted on February 27, 2023 by Ahmed R. Teleb

Antoine Vergne (of Mission Publique) and I were invited guests on the American cultural center Hamburg’s podcast for two episodes over the last two weeks.

The discussion was much too short to be anything new to regular readers of EbL, but I wanted to post it as another sign of the mainstream acceptance of the idea of sortition. Another disclaimer, the Amerikazentrum is a propaganda outfit for the US & German foreign ministries. So, as expected, the framing of the show starts with cliched talking points about Brexit, Ukraine, autocracy v. democracy, etc…

I think the discussion went slightly beyond the “representation” argument. In particular, Antoine made some interesting points about the non-adversarial nature of assemblies as compared to referenda. Quite interesting for me was his story about how he happened upon “Stochacracy.” As an undergraduate, I believe, he wrote a research paper that ended with the line: “Stochocrats of the world unite!”

My own intervention was not particularly interesting but I tried to reference a variety of literature including democratic critiques of allotted minipulbics in the show notes.

Part 1: https://thetrans-atlanticist.podigee.io/s4e2-a-better-democracy-is-possible-part-1-an-introduction-to-sortition-and-deliberation

Part 2: https://thetrans-atlanticist.podigee.io/s4e3-a-better-democracy-is-possible-part-2-from-theory-to-real-world-application

Let me know your thoughts, and perhaps we could crowd source a list of recent podcasts & videos on sortition.

Filed under: Deliberation, meta, Participation, Sortition | Tagged: , , , , | 14 Comments »

Equality by Lot 2022 statistics

Posted on December 23, 2022 by Yoram Gat

Below are some statistics about the 13th year of Equality-by-Lot. Comparable numbers for last year can be found here.

2022 Page views Posts Comments
Jan 4,070 15 183
Feb 2,557 6 24
Mar 2,772 10 26
Apr 2,942 8 20
May 3,557 8 26
June 2,455 5 48
July 2,333 8 11
Aug 3,797 7 32
Sept 2,960 6 5
Oct 3,278 10 21
Nov 3,110 10 27
Dec (to 23st) 2,263 5 92
Total 36,094 98 515

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

Posts were made by 16 authors during 2022. (There were, of course, many other authors quoted and linked to.)

This blog currently has 160 email followers, 356 WordPress followers and 511 Twitter followers (@Klerotarian).

Searching for “distribution by lot” (with quotes) using Google returns Equality-by-Lot as the 3rd result (out of “about 77,000 results”). Equality-by-Lot is now on the 12th page of results when searching for “sortition” using the Google search engine (out of “about 339,000 results”).

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 »

Call for 2022 review input

Posted on December 17, 2022 by Yoram Gat

This is the yearly call for input for the year’s end review. As in previous years, I would like to have a post or two summarizing the ongoings here at Equality-by-Lot and notable sortition-related events over the passing year. Any input about what should be included is welcome – either through comments below or via email. You are invited to refresh your memory about the events of the passing year by browsing Equality-by-Lot’s archives.

For previous years’ summaries see: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010.

Filed under: Distribution by lot, meta, Sortition | 3 Comments »

2021 review – statistics

Posted on December 21, 2021 by Yoram Gat

Below are some statistics about the 12th year of Equality-by-Lot. Comparable numbers for last year can be found here.

2021 Page views Posts Comments
Jan 2,684 13 182
Feb 3,105 15 117
Mar 3,253 11 131
Apr 3,096 9 118
May 3,303 14 34
June 2,806 11 70
July 2,408 7 76
Aug 2,506 6 41
Sept 2,314 11 93
Oct 2,400 8 102
Nov 2,388 10 136
Dec (to 21st) 2,133 10 92
Total 32,396 125 1,192

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

Posts were made by 20 authors during 2021. (There were, of course, many other authors quoted and linked to.)

This blog currently has 152 email followers, 334 WordPress followers and 499 Twitter followers (@Klerotarian).

Searching for “distribution by lot” (with quotes) using Google returns Equality-by-Lot as the 2nd result (out of “about 330,000 results”). Continuing the demotion trend which has begun last year, Equality-by-Lot is now on the 10th page of results when searching for “sortition” using the Google search engine (out of “about 285,000 results”). This demotion may explain the significant decline in the total number of views in 2021 relative to 2020.

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 | 4 Comments »

Call for 2021 review input

Posted on December 10, 2021 by Yoram Gat

This is the yearly call for input for the year’s end review. As in previous years, I would like to have a post or two summarizing the ongoings here at Equality-by-Lot and notable sortition-related events over the passing year. Any input about what should be included is welcome – either through comments below or via email. You are invited to refresh your memory about the events of the passing year by browsing Equality-by-Lot’s archives.

For previous years’ summaries see: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010.

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

New subtitle for Equality-by-Lot

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Yoram Gat

This is to announce the results of the vote for a new subtitle for this blog.

Terry Bouricius has done the hard work of collecting the ranked choice lists and converting them to pairwise comparison matrices. Thanks, Terry!

Following Terry’s instructions, I have summed the matrices and produced the sum matrix. Candidate subtitle #6 has a clear advantage, beating almost all other candidates in a head-to-head comparison. The sole exception is candidate #26 which is tied with #6 at 8 votes each. However, Terry assures me that despite this tie, due to tie-breaking considerations, candidate #6 is the undisputed winner.

Reflecting this result, I will start taking steps to change the subtitle of this blog to “The democratic potential of sortition”.

I thank everybody for contributing candidates and registering their votes. Again I encourage the proposers and voters to take part in this blog in other ways as well.

Filed under: meta | 18 Comments »

Only two days left to vote!

Posted on January 10, 2021 by keithsutherland

The poll for the change to the subtitle of this blog ends on Tuesday, yet currently only .02% of the “electorate” have recorded their preferences. This might seem like a trivial matter, but it crucially affects the range and scope of the posts submitted. The blog was founded by Conall Boyle and others some ten years ago in order to discuss the work of those with an interest in lotteries for equal distribution and social justice — see for example Barbara Goodwin’s Justice by Lottery. However the blog soon became dominated by those (like Yoram and myself) exploring the political potential of sortition in reforming (or replacing) electoral democracy. This change of focus seems to meet the needs of most contributors and readers but it would be a tragedy if those working on other aspects of sortition felt excluded by an over-prescriptive sub-title. If you look at the book series Sortition and Public Policy you’ll see that around half of the titles are devoted to the non-political use of lot. And many theorists dealing with the political potential of sortition, for example Oliver Dowlen and Peter Stone are unpersuaded regarding the use of sortition for democratic representation (they focus more on the Blind Break as an arational prophylactic against factionalism). So it would be good if the new subtitle reflected the full range of interest in sortition. If you want to vote, just go to the Online Poll, look at the list of “candidates”, choose your preference(s) and post a comment, it’s that easy!

Filed under: Books, Distribution by lot, meta, Sortition | 2 Comments »

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