Media coverage of South Australia citizens jury

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Yoram Gat

Iain Walker of newDemocracy collected some TV reports about the citizens jury on alcohol related violence in South Australia:

ABC:
cjabc

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Filed under: Applications, Juries, Press, Sortition | 8 Comments »

Michael Donovan: Political Sortition for an Evolving World

Posted on July 11, 2013 by Yoram Gat

Michael Donovan has written his Master’s thesis about sortition:

Abstract
Our Western political systems are straining to prove their legitimacy partly because the internet generation demands both open information and a role in the decision making. Yet, electoral democracy may be incapable of evolving to meet those requirements. This paper looks at sortition, or the selection of decision makers by lottery, to supplement or to replace current representative democracy. Empowering a cross-section of society to make policy decisions would more directly address the interests and concerns of the populace, and would result in an egalitarian and inclusive body, more transparent and resistant to corruption than are current policy makers. Furthermore, diverse assemblies possess greater ability in solving difficult problems and in making accurate forecasts than do the more homogeneous groups that currently comprise governing parties. Consensus building increases this innovative potential. With the proper application of sortition and deliberation, therefore, advancement in the common good can be accelerated.

Keywords: Sortition; consensus building; deliberative democracy; open source software; activism

Filed under: Academia, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Adam Cronkright and Simon Pek: Reconstructing Democracy

Posted on July 8, 2013 by Yoram Gat

recondemo
Adam Cronkright sent the attached document and writes:

Here is a draft that I’ve put together to help explain the work we are doing here in Bolivia, and hopefully in other places in Latin America with time. Would love to get input/feedback from readers of the EqualityByLot blog.

In particular, I would love help with the citations in the section on ancient Athens. I’ve been a long ways from home for the last half a year, so I have no access to my personal computer, my personal library, nor any English public/academic library. So in putting this Overview together, I regularly cited a second/third-hand source (Arthur Robbins Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained: The True Meaning of Democracy), since it was one of the few .pdf’s I could access. But Robbins did not rigorously cite his Athenian history, and I would much prefer to cite primary sources when possible. So any help making that section more academically rigorous would be appreciated.
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Filed under: Applications, Athens, Books, Participation, Sortition | 23 Comments »

Asset or approval voting =?= sortitional selection

Posted on July 8, 2013 by Common Lot Sortitionist

As a result of my video entries to the Looking at Democracy contest, the following message came to my Common Lot website:

I’ve been a proponent of legislative juries for some time. We also promote advanced proportional representation systems.
ScoreVoting.net/Asset.html
ScoreVoting.net/RRV.html

Here was our Looking At Democracy contest entry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db6Syys2fmE

… I’d like to devote the rest of my life to democracy reform. The legislative jury idea is one I’m quite fond of. Feel free to join our discussion forum and share your thoughts. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/electionscience

Best,
Clay Shentrup
The Center for Election Science

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Filed under: Elections, Juries, Sortition | 32 Comments »

David Halevy: What is true democracy?

Posted on July 5, 2013 by Yoram Gat

David Halevy, a resident of British Columbia, Canada, advocates for replacing elections with sortition in a series of three videos:

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Filed under: Sortition | 3 Comments »

Sortition noted by far-right group

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Common Lot Sortitionist

http://www.counter-currents.com/tag/sortition/

Although electoral representation is a discredited system, White Nationalists should not give up on the idea or virtues of democratic representation but should seek alternative ways of achieving this through sortition — the selection of representatives through a randomized process like a national lottery.

The political potential of sortition is virtually unknown in White Nationalist circles. Edgar Steele mentioned it briefly in his book Defensive Racism arguing that juries, which are selected by sortition, should not only decide questions of fact, i.e. whether the accused has broken the law, but also importantly that they also be allowed to rule on the legitimacy of the law in question.[1] This essay goes far beyond Steele’s proposals and argues that sortition should play a decisive role in the political process itself, so much so that bad laws never see the light of day and are killed in their drafting stage.

Filed under: Sortition | 58 Comments »

Citizens Jury on alcohol related violence in South Australia

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Yoram Gat

news.com.au reports:

A “CITIZENS’ jury” will deliberate on Adelaide’s future and deliver their verdict to the State Government.

Forty randomly selected South Australians will consider how to make the city both vibrant and safe and their recommendations will go to Parliament.

Premier Jay Weatherill will outsource this latest incarnation of “debate and decide” to a not-for-profit organisation, the newDemocracy Foundation. It boasts the support of a range of luminaries and former politicians and is dedicated to finding a “better system” of government.

It will invite about 20,000 randomly selected people to apply, then use an algorithm to find 40 people who are broadly representative of the community.
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Filed under: Applications, Juries, Press, Sortition | 13 Comments »

Louis offers sortition to the Belgian parliament

Posted on June 15, 2013 by Yoram Gat

A commenter draws attention to a recent speech by Belgian MP Laurent Louis:

According to the description on the YouTube page, Louis is presenting a proposal based on the ideas of Etienne Chouard which is laid out in detail here: http://www.lachambre.be/FLWB/PDF/53/2860/53K2860001.pdf.

An automatic translation of the introduction of the proposal (with my touch-ups) is as follows:

A motion for a resolution on the revision of the electoral system and the establishment of the draw members of the Federal Parliament of the Kingdom of Belgium

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Introduction

The Kingdom of Belgium has gone through its history, a plurality of policies by landscapes from the bipartisan confrontation (1830-1893) to extreme multiparty (1965-present), all with a common point, the election. Belgium claims, like all Western countries which have adopted the same system, to be a representative democracy. Representative democracy is a “system in which elected representatives by the people develop and pass legislation.” This system, highly controversial for many years, does not give the people the opportunity to express itself and to pass laws (as in a direct democracy), but has “the great disadvantage of vesting the decision making power, not in the people themselves as the idea of ​​democracy suggests, but in representatives elected by the people and governments designated indirectly, not to mention even more indirect selection of public agencies and other institutions.”
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Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | 6 Comments »

Nicholas Gruen: Establish special-purpose ‘democratic’ elites

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Yoram Gat

Nicholas Gruen, CEO of Lateral Economics, Chairman of the Australian Centre for Social Innovation, an entrepreneur involved in a number of internet startups, wants to use sortition to “cut through the weaknesses of ‘vox pop democracy'”:

It turns out that it’s in the opposition’s interest to oppose government policy even where most informed people think the government is right, perhaps even where most of the people think it’s right. Whereupon the process of undermining community sentiment begins apace. On abstract and complex subjects, lots of effort can be expended emphasising uncertainties, nursing resentments, breaking the law to obtain emails and then using them to smear scientists’ motivations etc. Who cares that careful investigation showed that these emails didn’t illustrate what they were taken to illustrate? By then the caravan has moved on.

Other areas where there’s been strong consensus based around expert opinion which have then been exploited by oppositions include tax reform of virtually every hue from the mining tax to CGT, FBT and GST reform.
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Filed under: Elections, Juries, Sortition | 10 Comments »

Sortition in The Nation, fleetingly

Posted on June 8, 2013 by Yoram Gat

A review of David Graeber‘s book, The Democracy Project, in The Nation makes a brief mention of his offer of sortition. The Nation‘s verdict: “That sounds nice, but it’s far easier said than done.”

For many who were attracted by slogans like “banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” the fetishization of process seemed like bait and switch. Horizontal decision making at general assemblies and small groups could go on for hours. Far from being democratic, the time-consuming process discriminated against people with jobs, those who had to take care of children or sick people, those with health problems of their own and those unfamiliar with anarchist culture and jargon, among others. Just as is the case with liberal structures, horizontalism encourages democracy in some contexts and dampens it in others.
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Filed under: Press, Sortition | 3 Comments »

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