John Spritzler: Real Democracy = Ordinary People Make the Laws

Posted on May 3, 2011 by Yoram Gat

In November 2008, the following non-binding question was placed on the ballot of the Somerville district, MA:

Shall the state representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of a proposal to amend the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to replace the state Legislature with 100 randomly selected adult residents of the Commonwealth, each serving a one year term, to be called the Commonwealth Jury and to have all the legislative and other powers of the current Legislature?

The upcoming vote triggered an exchange of mostly scornful comments at the Davis Square discussion board.

The initiator of the proposal was apparently, John Spritzler, Research Scientist at a major School of Public Health in Boston, MA. Spritzler reports that the question won the support of 23% of the voters.

Filed under: Initiatives, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Participatory Budgeting

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Common Lot Sortitionist

Here’s an example that demonstrates that citizens can effectively grapple with the difficult issue of budgeting. The only piece missing, as far as true ‘government by the people’ is concerned, is that the groups convened to make these decisions should be randomly selected. Otherwise, it is only those who have the time and personal interest who ‘solve’ the community’s issues.

Government can’t solve budget battles? Let citizens do it.

To resolve the budget battles tearing apart Congress and state and local governments, politicians should look to a new model of citizen involvement: participatory budgeting.

Filed under: Participation, Sortition | 13 Comments »

Machiavellian Democracy

Posted on April 14, 2011 by keithsutherland

John P. McCormick’s new book (Machiavellian Democracy, CUP, 2011) is a fascinating attempt to appropriate insights from Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy (1513-17) in order to moderate some of the worst excesses of modern ‘democracy’ – in particular the Florentine’s advocacy of class-based magistracies to constrain the oppressive ‘humor’ of the grandi (political elite). Machiavelli’s template for this is the institutions of the Roman republic, especially the People’s Tribunes. Roman Tribunes were elected exclusively from plebeian ranks and were charged with popular advocacy; McCormick’s suggestion is that a modern equivalent (for the US) might involve fifty-one tribunes selected by an annual sortition from the whole population (apart from the wealthiest 10% of family households). The powers of the tribunes would be three-fold (p.184):

1.     To veto, by majority vote, one piece of congressional legislation, one executive order and one Supreme Court decision p.a.

2.     To call one annual referendum p.a. which, if ratified, would take on the force of federal statute.

3.     To initiate impeachment proceedings against one federal official from each of three branches of government. McCormick is particularly attracted to the Roman practice of political trials – any citizen could publicly accuse magistrates of malfeasance and this would prompt a hearing in a voting assembly, which could comprise the entire citizenry.

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Filed under: Books, Distribution by lot, Elections, Proposals, Sortition, Theory | 12 Comments »

The Triumph of Election

Posted on April 11, 2011 by keithsutherland

Why did the American founders ignore the case for sortition? It was well known at the time that sortition was one of the primary mechanisms of Athenian democracy and this explains why Madison and his Federalist chums (who were no democrats) ignored it. But even Antifederalists (who argued the democratic case for descriptive representation) failed to propose sortition as a means to establish a legislature that was a ‘portrait in miniature’ of the whole community. According to Bernard Manin it was philosophy – in the form of the Natural Right theory of consent – that was the principle cause of the ‘triumph of election’ (Manin, 1997, Ch.2). But is this true?

James Fishkin points out that the etymological root of ‘deliberation’ (deliberationem) is ‘weighing’ (2009, p.35), so when a randomly-selected assembly member of an allotted chamber (AC) ‘like me’ weighs up the arguments and judges accordingly then I am descriptively represented. But is it possible to take this further and argue that I thereby consent to the judgment of a randomly-selected assembly? The argument for this further claim would need to take the following lines (paraphrasing Fishkin, 2009):

  1. Someone ‘like’ me would, ex hypothesi, exercise judgment in the same way that I would myself. The argument does not require a definition of the ‘likeness’ criteria (age, gender, occupation, political preferences etc.), as the randomization process in principle reflects the incidence of any quality in the general population.
  2. The number of representatives ‘like me’ in an allotted assembly would be proportionate to the number in the general population. If the sample is not sufficiently fine-grained to accurately reflect the distribution of any quality deemed to be salient to the exercise of political judgment then the sample numbers would need to be increased accordingly: only a relatively small sample would be needed to provide an accurate gender balance, whereas the proportional representation of, say, albinos or molecular microbiologists would require a larger sample. The rapid growth of the polling industry is a testimonial to the accuracy and validity of the probability sampling principle.
  3. Therefore the aggregate judgment of the allotted assembly would represent the considered judgment of the whole population. This was the principle behind the nomothetai (legislative assemblies) introduced in fourth-century Athens.
  4. All electors are currently deemed to consent to the results of a general election, whether or not ‘their’ candidate was victorious; so the same principle should apply to the result of a vote in an allotted assembly (the only difference being the employment of one or other of the two mechanisms – election or sortition – that constitute a ‘ballot’.) Although one might argue that the ‘consent’ involved is at best tacit, hypothetical (or some other form of ‘useful fiction’), the same is true in both instances of the ‘ballot’.

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Filed under: Distribution by lot, Elections, History, Sortition | 36 Comments »

Pomper: The concept of elections in political theory

Posted on April 9, 2011 by Yoram Gat

In a 1967 paper, “The concept of elections in political theory”, Gerald M. Pomper briefly mentions “election by lot”.

The paper begins with an assertion:

Popular elections are generally assumed to be the crucial element of democratic governments, but the significance of elections is so widely assumed that it is rarely examined. Although studies of voting behavior abound, there are relatively few theoretical or empirical investigations of the effects of voting on the total political system.

This is an overstatement. Schumpeterian theory was well known and widely discussed at least as late as the 1950’s (e.g., Dahl’s A Preface to Democratic Theory) and a part of that theory is an analysis of the function of elections – an analysis that attacks the “classical doctrine of democracy”. Pomper seems to mean that there is little work attempting to defend the “classical doctrine”. His own defense is to a large extent a capitulation. He gives up on the hope of a representative government and is satisfied with the claim that elections “give the voters a means of protection, a method of intervention in politics when their vital interests were being threatened.” Of course, even this modest claim is not obvious and Pomper doesn’t offer a theoretical argument for its plausibility.

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Filed under: Elections, Sortition, Theory | 4 Comments »

Sortition in Student Government

Posted on April 8, 2011 by peterstone

A Stanford graduate student recently came up with the following thought experiment, part of a sustained tirade against the student government there–

http://tusb.stanford.edu/2011/04/suppose-we-abolished-the-assu-today-a-thought-experiment.html

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

Kleroterians in Chicago

Posted on April 5, 2011 by peterstone

As usual, there was a Kleroterian presence at the recent annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. There was a panel featuring one paper by myself and Scott Wentland, another paper by Jan-Willem Burgers, and one more by Melissa Schwartzberg (not sure if she’d call herself a Kleroterian, but she’s definitely sympathetic). Eric MacGilvray chaired the session (ditt0), and we received some excellent comments by Jack Knight. A very successful conference panel, I’d say. We also had an excellent Thai dinner the night before. It was attended by me, Scott, Jan, Eric, and Kleroterian Mindy Peden. I posted a picture of the event on the group’s Facebook page:

The response to the conference paper (which is very much a work in progress) has me thinking that there is a lot more work to be done on the way that randomization can influence political decision-making. Much of that influence comes from the fact that it induces a form of ignorance–it prevents people from knowing something. That can be good or bad; if you select jurors by lot, then you don’t know their race or partisan affiliation, but you also don’t know their intelligence or ability either. The goal of injecting randomness into politics is to ensure as much of the good effects of ignorance while minimizing the potential bad effects.  It could take a lot of work to sort all that out, on a theoretical level at least.

Oh, and my book was for sale at the conference as well. Let’s not forget that. Buy your copy today! [Here -Yoram]

Filed under: Books, Sortition | 5 Comments »

A letter to David Swanson

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Yoram Gat

[Updated below.]

Sortition advocate Richard Ward has pointed me at a televised panel discussion on CSPAN2’s BookTV titled “The Imperial Presidency“. One of the participants in the panel was David Swanson. I have just written the following email to Mr. Swanson:

Dear Mr. Swanson,

I have recently watched the “Imperial Presidency” panel discussion on BookTV in which you took part, and followed that with a visit to your website. I found that I agree with all of what you said in terms of the problems with the current political system.

I did not find, however, that you offered a practicable solution to the problems. You did suggest at one point joining a grass root non-partisan organization (such as RootsAction). While I understand and identify with the line of thinking that leads you to propose this activity, I think further examination would show that there is little reason to hope that it would be effective.

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Filed under: Sortition | 1 Comment »

Expecting More Say

Posted on March 26, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Expecting More Say is a 1999 report of the Center on Policy Attitudes analyzing the U.S. public’s dissatisfaction with its government. The report includes findings from a public opinion survey. One of the questions in the survey was as follows:

Imagine that a group of 500 American citizens was selected from all over the country to be representative of the entire US population. This group then met and were informed on all sides of the policy debate on a number of public policy issues and had a chance to discuss these issues. They were then asked to make decisions on what they thought was the best approach to these issues.

Do you think the decisions of such a group would probably be better or worse than the decisions that Congress makes?

66% of respondents thought the decisions by the representative group would be better, 15% thought they would be worse.

Filed under: Opinion polling, Sortition | 2 Comments »

7-minute presentation from Common Lot Productions

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Common Lot Sortitionist

Using the ’20-20′ discipline as presentational format (i.e., 20 panels, each strictly 20 seconds long), “Next Step for Democracy: A Government BY the People” explains why sortition is — as Aristotle said of the first democracy — the defining hallmark of democracy … and why elections are the hallmark of oligarchy.

“Next Step for Democracy” is a plea for a government by the people, all the people.

See the video at www.TheCommonLot.com

Filed under: Sortition | 9 Comments »

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