meta | Equality by lot

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 | Leave a 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: citizens' assemblies, democracy, podcast, random selection, sortition | 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

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 »

Subtitle change vote

Posted on January 5, 2021 by Yoram Gat

Following the call for proposals for changing the subtitle of this blog, we have the following proposals:

The blog of the Kleroterians (i.e., keep the subtitle as is.)
The political potential of sortition
Sortition as a democratic tool
No democracy without sortition
Because you can’t have democracy when you don’t have sortition
The democratic potential of sortition
Sorting out sortition
A blog to sort out sortition
Maximus in minimis
Put the man in the street in the catbird seat
Democratic lotteries and the potential of sortition
Selection by lot
Selecting political decision-makers the way we select jurors
More democracy by random selection of citizens
Better democracy through sortition
Renewing democracy through sortition
More democracy by haphazardly selected citizens
Sortition: next step for democracy
The political potential of democratic lotteries and sortition
More democracy via sortition
Democracy and the potential of sortition
Sortition is the future of democracy
Better politics through sortition
Sortition, impartiality, equality, People’s rule
Democracy through sortition
Sortition for democracy, fairness and good governance

(I tried to include no more than two proposals by each person. If you feel that there are fewer than 2 of your proposals on the list, or if you otherwise feel that your proposals were unfairly excluded, please let me know as soon as possible.)

Ideally, I would go with proportional representation, so that each subtitle would be used part of the time, where the part is determined by the proportion of the votes it got. However, I am afraid this is technically difficult. (Maybe we can consider changing the subtitle every year?)

As we all know, there are no good voting schemes, so we are left with using a bad one. I suggest then that we use ranked choice. Please respond in the comments below with exactly one ordered list of subtitles from the list above representing your order of preference. Voting closes in a week.

Filed under: Distribution by lot, meta, Sortition | 64 Comments »

Changing Equality-by-Lot’s subtitle

Posted on December 29, 2020 by Yoram Gat

It has been suggested that the current subtitle of this blog (“The blog of the Klerotarians”) is esoteric and may be both discouraging for potential readers and detrimental to the blog’s search engine ranking (specifically, when searching for “sortition”).

Several alternative subtitles have been suggested – listed below. If you have other ideas, please add them in the comments. (Please no more than 2 per person.) In a week I will create a post asking readers to vote for their preferred proposal.

While we are discussing this, maybe we should consider changing the banner image as well? The kleroterion is a bit of a cliché at this point, in my opinion, and it may not be the most attractive piece of graphics to represent sortition. Any ideas about a new banner?

Proposals for subtitles: