Equality by lot

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 »

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 »

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 »

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 »

Rod Rylander writes in the OpEdNews website, offering a proposal similar to that of Callenbach and Phillips:

Only a True Democracy Can Meet The People’s Needs; We Need a New Way to Select Representatives to Congress

Given the legislative paralysis we now see in Washington, it is all too obvious that American democracy has been undermined by the influence of party politics, money, lobbyists, and the shallow bread-and-circuses quality of our mass communications.

To remedy things, we need to think outside the box — and I mean way outside the box.

My solution for reforming our dysfunctional, corrupt Congress — specifically, the House of Representatives — is to replace members now tied to the unproductive, toxic system of party politics with ordinary citizens who are qualified but randomly selected. The procedure I envision is this: In each precinct of a congressional district, one person would be selected at random from a body of citizen volunteers who meet qualifying criteria set forth in a Constitutional amendment. The district-wide representative to Congress would then be randomly selected from the body of those picked at the precinct level. No politicking would be allowed at either stage of the selection process — and would in any case be irrelevant to the totally random system of selection. The Congressional term limit would be six years, with staggered selections scheduled annually. The result would be that in each successive year one-sixth of the Congress would consist of new representatives.

[…]

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | 1 Comment »