My feeling is that the future of politics doesn’t have any elections in it

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Yoram Gat

The Huffington Post has an article which mixes some standard issue techno-progressivist messages with a rejection of elections and a proposal of government by policy juries:

Jim Gilliam, CEO and co-founder of NationBuilder, […] and his co-founders Jesse Haff and Joe Green created the service to help people organize their own communities. As Gilliam said in the first part of our interview, he sees the primary political divide in our country not as one of “left vs. right. The divide is the people vs. the powerful.” This is something that Gilliam sees as not standing for long in an age of instantaneous, ubiquitous communication.

“The internet will reset all of that,” said Gilliam. “There’s no question it has to, because the internet has this really difficult relationship with power. I have deep emotional issues with power, and I believe that the way to deal with it is to give it to everybody. The biggest way to destroy it is that everybody has it. So build tools so that you can build your power base. and everybody wants that. That’s the currency of 21st century, it’s less all the money you have and it’s more how big your nation is.”

[…]

“My feeling is that the future of politics doesn’t have any elections in it. […]”

“No elections” runs against the grain of the way we currently think of democracy. Yet our own system already contains the framework of what Gilliam sees as a better, more participatory solution that addresses the issues of corruption and ignorance that he sees as plaguing our current democracy.

Continue reading →

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

Bristol Radical History Group: From Athens to the Electoral Lottery

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Dan Bennett, of the Bristol Radical History Group, presents a description of the Athenian democratic system and proposes a sortition party.

Cheerleaders for parliamentary democracy often hark back semi-legendary ‘golden ages’ as a foundation of the modern electoral process. Do these myths have any basis in reality and what relevance do they have today? Dan Bennett uncovers the hidden history of Athenian popular democracy and proposes a modern alternative.

‘Every Cook Can Govern’: From Athens to the Electoral Lottery – part 1, part 2, part 3.

Filed under: Athens, Elections, Proposals, Sortition | 19 Comments »

A summary of Chouard’s talk, and links to some concurring posts

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Below is my itemized summary of the ideas presented by Ètienne Chouard:

  1. The core of democracy is political equality
  2. Elections are anti-democratic
    • Not designed to be democratic, and no such claims made by its designers
    • History shows that elections put the rich in power
    • The powerful support elections – cannot be a threat to them
    • It is a paradox that the entire political spectrum supports elections
    • Based on a myth – being able to choose the good
    • Rule by the worst – “good people don’t care about governing”
    • Elections are appropriate for small scale – depend on knowing people and being able to follow what they do, in large systems, the voters do not know the candidates and do not know what they do

    Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 11 Comments »

Right-wing conservative proposal to use sortition

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Common Lot Sortitionist

Coming from the right-wing in Texas, interesting to see they suggest using sortition to select a ‘super grand jury’ for the sake of, possibly, resisting federal enforcement of what any citizen might want to declare as unconstitutional.

In the lecture by Étienne Chouard, he makes much of the fact that Athenians distrusted each other and therefore had several ‘controls’ before, during and after final decisions made in the Assembly.  I have found myself sometimes agreeing with inquiries that say “Well, you must believe in the essential goodness of human nature if you trust just anyone to deliberate upon policy issues.”

This proposal from the Tenth Amendment Commission could be a sensible citizen control. I’m glad to see sortition considered by the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ folks.

[The Tenth Amendment in its entirety: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”]

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | 15 Comments »

We the Citizens

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Yoram Gat

A story in the Irish University Observer leads to an organization called “We the People“. The organization is apparently led by a group of politicians and academics.

The organization held a meeting of randomly selected people (“citizen’s assembly”) over a weekend in which various policy issues were discussed. The general structure seems very similar to that of a Fishkin DP – a limited, pre-defined scope; a term measured in days; expert opinion presented; small group discussions alternating with large group sessions.

The organization released a report in December. It describes the process as follows:

We the Citizens was a pilot project to test whether a more participatory form of democracy could work in Ireland. The model tested was a Citizens’ Assembly, which is a form of deliberative democracy.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Participation, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 2 Comments »

The San Francisco Chronicle: Fishkin promoting a citizens advisory council

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Lois Kazakoff, Chronicle Columnist, writes:

Concerned by California’s faltering government, a coalition of eight nonprofit good government groups conducted an experiment in June. They invited 435 Californians of every stripe from every corner of the state, from every political persuasion to spend three days in a Torrance hotel deliberating 30 proposals for government reform. The coalition raised $1 million to cover their travel costs.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Ballot measures, Opinion polling, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 8 Comments »

Guardians of the future

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Green ‘super jury’ idea proposed to protect the future environment
by ClickGreen staff

A new report has been launched proposing the creation of a green ‘super jury’ of ordinary people to act as guardians for the country’s future.

The ‘Guardians of the Future’ report by University of East Anglia philosopher Dr Rupert Read calls for radical constitutional reform to safeguard the basic needs of future generations.

He proposes that a council of randomly picked members of the public, like a jury, should be placed above the House of Lords to oversee all government decisions – with the power of veto to stop legislation which threatens the interests of future generations.

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | 2 Comments »

George A. Christos: Democracy by random selection

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Yoram Gat

The abstract of George Christos’s essay Democracy by random selection is:

Abstract: We propose a non-political parliamentary system where the parliamentarians are randomly chosen from the public, using computer technology, and there are no elections. In this ‘random parliament’, government is by ordinary people with proportional representation by all groups including women, men, workers, managers, old people, young people, and so on. The random parliament is the closest thing to true democracy that is currently attainable. Local government may be a suitable place to trial the idea of random representation.

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | 20 Comments »

2011 review – sortition-related events

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Yoram Gat

In response to my call for suggestions of mention-worthy occurrences relevant to the topics discussed on this blog, George Tridimas wrote to let me know that his paper Constitutional choice in ancient Athens: The rationality of selection to office by lot has made for a couple of weeks the list of 10 most downloaded articles from the SSRN repository in the categories of Welfare Economics & Collective Decision-Making, of History of Political Thought and of Models of Political Processes.

To me, two significant sortition-related developments that occurred this year, happened at two opposite sides of the mass-elite spectrum.

On the elite side, the newDemocracy foundation in Australia has been active in promoting policy juries and successful in garnering some press attention (1, 2). The main force behind this foundation, both intellectually and financially, it appears, is Luca Belgiorno-Nettis.

On the other hand, there have been several attempts to promote and use sortition associated with the global protest movement – the so-called Arab Spring, the Indignados, the Occupy Wall Street movement, etc. Back in February, Sa’ada Abu Bakr suggested sortition to the Egyptian revolutionaries. In June, the Greek activists in Syntagma Square were using randomization to distribute speaking turns. The idea of citizen councils appointed by lot was also featured in some May 15th platforms in Spain and in September a party which had the implementation of sortition as its main goal was organizing there. That party ultimately failed to qualify for the ballot. Finally, the People’s Senate Party promotes sortition in Canada.

Happy New Year, and best wishes for 2012.

Filed under: meta, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 14 Comments »

Strategies to implement sortition?

Posted on December 20, 2011 by davidschecter

I’ve been thinking recently about strategies to implement sortition – especially incremental strategies that start with relatively small, feasible steps, and then gradually build up to more ambitious goals. I have a special interest in strategies that could be feasible on a municipal level in or near the city where I live (San Francisco), because I’d like to be part of such a project, but I’m also very interested in any strategies people have suggested that might work in any part of the world.

Harald, you recently proposed two strategies:

  1. Add a small number of allotted members to an existing elected legislature, then increase the number of allotted members
  2. Conduct one-off sortition exercises (with the allotted bodies having some decision making power) on first a few issues, then more

Kevin O’Leary proposed starting by creating an allotted legislative body (the “People’s Assembly”) that would be advisory only, then later giving it legislative authority.

I’ve been thinking about three other strategies:

  1. Conducting a foundation-funded, local government supported experiment with a municipal level second chamber chosen by lot (in US cities, the legislative branch is usually unicameral).
  2. Creating an actual allotted second chamber in a municipality, with legislative authority; then doing the same in a few more municipalities, then replacing one branch of a state legislature with an allotted chamber in a small state or province.
  3. Creating a single purpose allotted legislative body (say, on health care or environmental legislation), then adding more.

What other strategies do you folks know of?

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | 24 Comments »

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