2013 review – statistics

Posted on December 20, 2013 by Yoram Gat

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

2013 Page views Posts Comments
Jan 1,665 9 118
Feb 1,273 3 17
Mar 1,329 5 111
Apr 1,783 12 163
May 1,628 11 84
June 1,499 11 118
July 1,801 9 148
Aug 1,578 5 82
Sept 1,730 10 182
Oct 2,518 12 234
Nov 1,629 9 147
Dec (to 20th) 950 4 34
Total 19,383 100 1,438

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

Posts were made by 10 authors during 2013. (There were, of course, many other authors quoted and linked to.)

There are currently 116 email and WordPress followers of this blog. In addition there are 24 Twitter followers (@Klerotarian) and 43 Facebook followers.

Searching for “distribution by lot” (with quotes) using Google returns Equality-by-Lot as the second result (out of “about 109,000 results”), as well as the third and fourth results. Searching for “sortition” returns Equality-by-Lot as the 9th result (out of “about 60,800 results”).

Filed under: Elections, meta, Sortition | 1 Comment »

No equality for women without sortition

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Yoram Gat

The essay below was written at the suggestion of Campbell Wallace. It is meant as an attempt to recruit feminists to the cause of sortition. As an aside, it is worth mentioning, I think, that while, of course, men could be feminists, and some are, it is still somewhat embarrassing that all of the regular writers on Equality-by-Lot are men (I believe).

Almost 100 years ago, as the suffragist struggle in the US was approaching its successful culmination with the 19th Amendment, the feminist-anarchist activist Emma Goldman wrote her essay “Woman Suffrage”. It opens so:

We boast of the age of advancement, of science, and progress. Is it not strange, then, that we still believe in fetich [sic] worship? True, our fetiches have different form and substance, yet in their power over the human mind they are still as disastrous as were those of old. Our modern fetich is universal suffrage. Those who have not yet achieved that goal fight bloody revolutions to obtain it, and those who have enjoyed its reign bring heavy sacrifice to the altar of this omnipotent deity. Woe to the heretic who dare question that divinity!

And later:

There is no reason whatever to assume that woman, in her climb to emancipation, has been, or will be, helped by the ballot.

Electoral fetish

The veracity of Goldman’s opening statements has not diminished by the passage of time. Indeed, “electoral fetish” is a two-word description of most of the political discourse of the last 100 years, both public and academic. As for Goldman’s last assertion, it may be considered somewhat extreme, but what is clear is that 100 years of women’s suffrage have not brought women anywhere near equality with men. If attaining suffrage was a tool of emancipation (rather than merely the milestone it surely was), then it is evident that this tool was not nearly as powerful as its most ardent promoters believed it would be1.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, History, Sortition | 46 Comments »

Call for 2013 review input

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Yoram Gat

As in the past years (2012, 2011, 2010), I would like to create a post or two summarizing the sortition- and distribution-by-lot-related developments of the year and the activity here on Equality-by-Lot.

Please use the comments to give your input on what you think are the most mention-worthy events or essays of the past year.

Filed under: Distribution by lot, meta, Sortition | 7 Comments »

Making A Case for Democracy By Sortition

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Yoram Gat

Google Alerts found the following proposal and discussion, going much along the standard lines.

The Athenian magistrate system had many problems during it’s long life, and one of them was the issue of rule via oligarchy: in a democratic system driven by voter elections (as championed by Socrates), magistrates could effectively buy their seats. In turn, the Greek administration created by popular vote came represent only the interests of the wealthy.

This problem was solved by discarding elections in favor of sortition – simply drawing from the public at random whom would hold what seat for a given term.

I think this is a system that ought to be seriously considered for use today (of course it will never be, but whatever, I can pretend that this is totes up for debate somehow & somewhere).

…So you just pick people at random, and boom, there’s your government?

In essence, yes. There’s an annual lottery (or bi-annual, or however many times over ‘X’ time period you want to rotate people out), and everyone that meets eligibility criteria (so, presumably, no children) are included in said lottery. If your name / SSN / whatever is drawn, you fill a seat. It’s a paid position, just like today, and you otherwise do exactly what government officials do (or are supposed to do) right now.

Filed under: Athens, Sortition | 3 Comments »

Constitution of Venice 1268

Posted on November 30, 2013 by constitutionalism

We have discussed the use of sortition by the Republic of Venice that evolved until it was stabilized in 1268. However, although we have commentaries on it from authors like Krag and Adams, it would be useful to have the text of their “constitution” of that time. The problem is that this consists of a number of statutti mixed with other legislation, and I have not yet found anywhere that the relevant ones have been extracted and collected into some semblance of a constitution as we tend to understand the term.

If anyone has a knowledge of 1268 legal Italian and access to the statutes, it would be a useful scholarly effort to gather the relevant ones into a single document we can put online. Anyone up to the job?

Filed under: History, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Sortition on BBC4 Radio PM programme

Posted on November 27, 2013 by Conall Boyle

Today (27 Nov 2013) in a series about reforming democracy, a listener proposes picking MPs by lot. A panel of Bogdanor, Runciman and Clare Fox sympathise but don’t think it would solve anything.

It starts at 25 mins in, and runs for about 5 mins at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03jdw6p

[BBC sometimes does not allow access outside UK]

Filed under: Applications, Athens, Sortition | 9 Comments »

Accountability and Sortition

Posted on November 5, 2013 by tbouricius

In some sense, sortition side-steps the entire issue of “accountability,” in that none of the “legislators” on an allotted jury have any constituents to hold them accountable. For legislators, “accountability” assumes a division of interests or preferences between constituents and legislators, typically with elections (and the threat of removal) being used like a leash to keep the legislators in line, and prevent them from straying too far.

Jane Mansbridge of Harvard, who became president of the American Political Science Association in 2012 and authored the book “Beyond Adversary Democracy,” points out two approaches to accountability. The first is the “sanction” model of accountability (the dog leash). The other is selection of representatives who naturally, without external incentives, seek to represent the interests of constituents because they are congruous with their own.

Sortition expressly seeks to prevent “accountability” of legislators to the rationally ignorant, ill-informed, and fleeting preferences of the general population, while also preventing accountability to political and monied elites. I want my legislators to act as I would act if well informed, not as my current superficial understanding may suggest. So, with regards to legislative performance, sortition needs a different term than “accountability,” as a measure of its performance.

However, I think accountability absolutely IS the appropriate term for discussing the performance of the executive functions of government. But the accountability should be to allotted juries that are well-informed, rather than merely to an ill-informed and media-manipulated citizenry. Here sortition can play an important role in constituting juries for constantly monitoring the performance of government, with the job of hiring and firing executives.

Filed under: Applications, Juries, Sortition, Theory | 18 Comments »

Russell Brand doesn’t vote

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Yoram Gat

A small media disturbance has been caused by Russell Brand‘s anti-voting message. Jeremy Paxman scolds him on TV with the usual threadbare formulas of electoralism. Robert Webb re-joins Labour. Brand has even found the occasional supporter.

I particularly like this:

I know, I know my grandparents fought in two world wars (and one World Cup) so that I’d have the right to vote. Well, they were conned.

I only wish that when Paxman asked Brand what his alternative to the current system is, he would have replied: “sortition!” It seemed like Brand himself wished he had something concrete to say. Please consider writing to Brand to tell him what he has been missing. He could be the high-profile champion sortition needs.

Filed under: Action, Elections, Press, Sortition | Tagged: , , | 11 Comments »

How could Sortition fix any of this?

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Conall Boyle

An excellent piece in today’s (London) Independent on Sunday on the impotence of not just citizens, but politicians and even Prime Ministers in the face of global economic power

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/power-to-the-people-dont-make-me-laugh-8919136.html

So what is the point of replacing powerless politicians with citizen’s juries?

Filed under: Elections, Juries, Sortition | 36 Comments »

Monobina Gupta: The tyranny of the elected representatives

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Yoram Gat

Monobina Gupta writes in www.dnaindia.com:

Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party can be an answer to the tyranny of the elected representatives

Who would have thought that the bespectacled, mild-mannered, boyish looking Arvind Kejriwal is going to give the two domineering national parties such a scare in the imminent contest for Delhi? Not so long ago, such a reckless suggestion would surely have been met with laconic condescension even acidic contempt from Congress and BJP heavyweights. At the height of the Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption upsurge two years ago, these politicians, ensconced in their risk-free comfort zones, had one crisp message for the street protestors: Fight us, if you will but only in the electoral battlefield. ‘The tyranny of the unelected’, they fumed. As if elections were the only means of acquiring political legitimacy. All other protests, by this reckoning, deserved derision unless they acquired a momentum threatening to upset the electoral applecart of the ‘elected.’
Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, Press, Sortition | 5 Comments »

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