A practical and transparent method to sort

Posted on November 15, 2020 by rcaze

In this short post, I introduce a method that might interest readers from this blog. I present a practical method that randomly pick people without the need for a trustworthy third party. Before describing it in more details, I want to insist on its two main features.

The method is practical because it only requires a basic computer (a smartphone largely suffices). Computers cannot generate random numbers because they are deterministic, however they can produce long sequences of numbers that do not repeat themselves for a long time. If you don’t know how the computer generated sequence work it is difficult to predict the next outcome. The numbers in this sequence will constitute our set of random numbers.

How could we generate the set without a trustworthy party? A malevolent individual can let the computer run until they obtain the desired results. If you know the initial number of the sequence and how the sequence works the result becomes entirely deterministic. We call this number the seed and this number will entirely determine our set of random numbers. We use this property to generate an impossible to forge sorted list of members. But how do we pick this seed?

Our method uses a stock market index. This has two interesting properties, firstly it is impossible to predict (otherwise tell me so we can become rich fast :) and every market agrees on it. This guarantees true randomness. Secondly, everybody will be able to reproduce our sortition if they have the seed value, the member’s list and the script we used. This guarantees transparency and accessibility.

We will employ this method in our association (l’Association Française pour la Sortition) to constantly renew our board. I already wrote the code using the CAC40 index to perform this task, it is free, open-source and you can access it you can follow this link: https://framagit.org/PersonnePirate/sort.

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: , | 13 Comments »

Random Selection for the Supreme Court

Posted on October 28, 2020 by Alex Kovner

In an opinion piece in The New York Times, Yale law student Melody Wang lays out an extremely cogent argument for random selection in choosing cases. She emphasizes the power of random selection to prevent corrupt practices, and to focus advocates on directing their arguments to the general good, rather than to specific decision makers.

Filed under: Academia, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 7 Comments »

Yamaguchi: Lottocracy: Considerations on Representative Democracy by Lot

Posted on October 20, 2020 by Yoram Gat

Akito Yamaguchi is a second-year doctoral student at the University of Tokyo, Japan, specializing in political philosophy, especially lottocracy. This is the author’s summary of a paper by Yamaguchi published in the Japanese Journal of Political Thought (May 2020).

Lottocracy: Considerations on Representative Democracy by Lot

This paper aims to examine the relevance of “lottocracy” as a lawmaking system. Lottocracy is the idea of a representative system in which representatives in the legislature are appointed by lottery rather than by election. This paper compares lottocracy and electoral democracy in terms of instrumental value, i.e., the value of the outcomes of these procedures. It assesses the value of both systems in terms of the interests of the people: how well do the systems promote the interests of the people?

To assess the instrumental value of the electoral and lottocratic systems, I use two methods. First, I use two criteria to assess the interests of the people: the criterion of equal reflection and the criterion of competence. The criterion of equal reflection is a criterion for assessing the extent to which the system equally reflects the will of the people. The criterion of competence is a criterion to assess for assessing how competent a legislator is in terms of lawmaking.

Second, I assess the electoral and lottocratic systems in both an ideal condition and a non-ideal condition. In the ideal condition, I assess each system in the condition in which it functions best. In the non-ideal condition, I assess each system in the real world in which we live.

Section 1 assesses both systems in the ideal condition. In the ideal condition, the electoral system is superior to the lottocratic system. This is because representatives who are superior to others are elected in the electoral system and so the electoral system is higher in terms of the criterion of competence. Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Elections, Proposals, Sortition | 11 Comments »

New edition of Down with Elections!

Posted on October 19, 2020 by campbellwallace

The latest edition of “Down with Elections! a plan for Democracy without Elections” is now available. The paperback is at https://www.amazon.com/DOWN-ELECTIONS-plan-DEMOCRACY-WITHOUT/dp/B0851M9H3F.

Users of this forum can obtain a free digital version (epub, mobi or PDF) directly from me (email to cwallace@free.fr).

Changes from the last published version (V3) are mainly explanatory, there are no major changes to the model of government proposed. (Changes from earlier versions are too numerous to list here.) Nothing I have seen or read recently has persuaded me that the overall design of the system proposed in the book needs changing, and events of the last few years – indeed of the last two hundred years – have only reinforced my opinion that we cannot have true democracy until we replace elected parliaments by ones chosen by lot.

Une version française est maintenant disponible (en broché) :
https://www.amazon.fr/démocratie-sans-élections-Campbell-Wallace/dp/B085R72PK5 (5,38 € + livraison)
ou
https://www.thebookedition.com/fr/democratie-sans-elections-p-372653.html (7,23€ + livraison)

On peut avoir la version digitale gratuitement en envoyant un mail à cwallace@free.fr.

Filed under: Books, Elections, Proposals, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Deliberative assemblies are finding their feet – but also facing political barriers

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Oliver Milne

On Friday the 16th of October, the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College hosted a webinar entitled ‘Revitalizing Democracy: Sortition, Citizen Power, and Spaces of Freedom’, which you can watch here. The workshop heavily featured people putting sortition into practice right now, and so the overall focus was very much on deliberative assemblies in advisory roles, rather than non-deliberative juries or lawmaking roles. If you’d rather not spend the whole day watching a videoconference, here’s the CliffsNotes:

David Van Reybrouck, who gave one of the keynotes, helped design the new citizens’ council and assembly system in the parliament of the German-speaking region of Belgium – an area with only 76 000 citizens, but devolved powers similar to Scotland’s. The system involves a permanent citizens’ council and temporary citizens’ assemblies, both selected by sortition, as well as a permanent secretary who acts as a sort of ombudsman for the system. The council sets the agenda for the assemblies, and chases up their conclusions in the regional parliament – essentially acting as an official lobby group for the assemblies’ recommendations. Politicians have to report back to the council a year after each assembly, setting out how they’ve acted on their recommendations and, if they’ve deviated from them, why. In this respect it is a major step forward in the institutionalisation of sortition. Under the Belgian constitution, however, sortitional bodies cannot be given legislative power, so the assemblies are restricted to an advisory role until and unless momentum can be built for a constitutional amendment.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Action, Applications, Deliberation, Opinion polling, Proposals, Sortition | 8 Comments »

The question of sortition generates a heated debate in the French Senate

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Yoram Gat

The following is a translation of an AFP article.

Reform of the CESE: The question of sortition generates a heated debate in the French Senate
October 15, 2020

Representative democracy vs. participative democracy: the question of the usage of allotment of citizen for participation in public consultations has generated a heated debate in the Senate during the discussion of the proposal for the reform of the Council for the Economy, Society and Environment (CESE).

The organic law bill, adopted by the National Assembly in September was approved on Thursday in first reading by the Senate with 292 votes for (LR, UC, PS, the large majority of RDSE, LIRT) and 50 abstentions (RDPI – mostly the LREM members, CRCE – mostly the communists, EST).

Assembly members and Senators are now going to try to reach an agreed text in a joint committee. If that fails, the National Assembly will have the last word.

During his speech in front of Congress in 2017, President Emmanuel Macron spoke about transforming the CESE, a little-known consultative institution which convenes representatives of employers, of workers’ unions and of NGOs at the Palais d’Iéna, into “a chamber of the future, where all the stakeholders of the nation take part”.

Short of a constitutional reform, the organic law bill aims to breathe new life into this institution in order to respond to strong demand for participative democracy in public opinion. Notably, the bill streamlines petitioning the CESE for it to form an opinion on economic, social and environmental questions raised by the public. The number of required signatures would be reduced from 500,000 to 150,000. The senators have approved this procedure with some reservations.

Moreover, opposing “any legitimization of sortition”, the right-wing Senate majority has removed any possibility for the CESE to organize “public consultations” based on allotment modeled after the Citizen Climate Convention. The removal of this central tool has been debated at length, with the government and the Left failing to reintroduce it through amendments during session.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 9 Comments »

Chumbley: Abolish student government elections now

Posted on September 26, 2020 by Yoram Gat

Robert Chumbley writes in the Tulane Hullabaloo:

Elections are detrimental to the establishment of diversity of thought in any given student government. Cognitive diversity is more important to the success of political leadership than relying solely on demographic diversity, which can potentially foster differences in thinking but does not guarantee it.

When individuals with varying opinions interact, these relationships are more conducive to innovation and the development of problem solving abilities. Given that cognitive diversity and the ensuing boon to collective problem solving should be a higher priority than the maintenance of elections for traditional-ideological purposes, Tulane ought to replace USG elections with sortition, the random selection of individuals for offices.

The reason for that logical jump may not be intuitively obvious, but the fact is that random allotment of political offices promotes cognitive diversity and improves problem solving ability.

Random selection does not produce a mob of unqualified commoners. In truth, those who object to sortition on the basis of “lack of qualification” are effectively dividing the population into commoners and elites, the former of whom deserve to be managed and the latter of whom deserve to manage by virtue of their special “qualifications,” whatever those are alleged to be.
Continue reading →

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

Mark Rice-Oxley: Should citizens assemblies be mandatory?

Posted on September 15, 2020 by Jonathan Crock

Mark Rice-Oxley, acting membership editor of The Guardian, wrote a short piece entitled “Should citizens assemblies be mandatory?” He is supportive of the idea, writing: “Last year, I went to a citizens’ assembly. It was one of the most optimistic moments of 2019 for me.” “Perhaps a stint or two on a citizens’ assembly should be mandatory, like jury service or driving tests.”

Filed under: Deliberation, Participation, Press, Proposals | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

A lottery for top jobs is not such a crazy idea

Posted on September 11, 2020 by Conall Boyle

So says Amanda Goodall in an article in the Financial Times 9 Sept 2020.  You can read the article in full here (dodging the FT paywall!).

http://www.amandagoodall.com/FTRandom2020-09-07_101201.pdf

Dr Goodall of the Cass Business School, London has produced many papers on management and HR. She has tried to promote the idea of Lotteries for Jobs with Margit Osterloh, a Swiss academic.

Amanda tells me “It is a hard one [the idea of lotteries for jobs] to get off the ground. It has been hard to publish our article.”

It is very rewarding to find others in the field working on this form of ‘Local Democracy’ as Elster calls it. There are further developments which I will post here shortly.

Filed under: Academia, Distribution by lot, Employment, Press, Proposals | Tagged: , , | 8 Comments »

The Service Pool

Posted on September 10, 2020 by Alex Kovner

I don’t think we pay enough attention to the executive branch on this blog, nor do we pay enough attention to the careers of executive branch officials. There’s nothing theoretically fun about it, but when democracies give way to dictatorships, it’s usually through some group of executive branch officials who commandeer the system for their personal benefit.

In part 2 of my never-ending series on the executive branch, I explore ways to create a more professional corps of executive officers. Perhaps one day a force organized along these lines will be able to steer the ship of state with no chance of crashing into the rocks of authoritarianism or running aground on the shoals of dysfunction.

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: , , , , | 15 Comments »

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