Citizens’ conventions: The sweet trap of a democratic facade

Posted on November 6, 2025 by Yoram Gat

An opinion column in Le Télégramme, a regional newspaper of Brittany, France. Original in French. The version below is a translation by Google Translate with my touch-ups.

In an opinion piece, Agnès Le Brun, regional councilor and former mayor of Morlaix, shares her perspective on participatory democracy as practiced through citizens’ conventions.

They present themselves as the miracle cure for a weary democracy, the supposedly “sweet” remedy to reconcile citizens with public decision-making. Citizens’ conventions, with their reliance on sortition and participatory deliberation, are appealing because of their promise: to bring “real life” into the world of political decision-making. But behind this veneer of democratic innovation too often lies a carefully cultivated illusion, one that harms democracy as much as it claims to revitalize it.

The first pitfall is the pretense of participation. These mechanisms are presented as a break with traditional institutions. In reality, behind a supposedly depoliticized staging of the debate, the agenda is set from above, the topics are framed, and the conclusions are rarely taken seriously by those who commissioned them.

The perennial issue of decentralization, a quintessentially Breton topic, and Loïg Chesnais-Girard’s campaign promises, diluted over time, have led the President of the Brittany Region to propose a citizens’ convention in 2026, supposedly to address the subject in the most democratic way possible. Really? Sortition is primarily a convenient pretext for circumventing elections and allows for the maintenance of the illusion of representativeness. Because a few dozen Bretons are chosen at random, the claim is that “the people” are being heard.
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Filed under: Applications, Deliberation, Elections, Press, Sortition | 6 Comments »

Sortition is the only worthwhile democratic option

Posted on November 1, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Octave Larmagnac-Matheron writes in the French magazine Philosophie [Original in French. Below is an English version generated by Google Translate with my touch-ups]:

In one of his characteristically thought-provoking Facebook posts, the philosopher Valentin Husson wrote a few days ago: ‘When the world tips towards illiberal democracies and authoritarianism, political courage would dictate that we propose a radical democracy. The only worthwhile one would be sortition (as with lay juries).’ I readily agree with both the observation and the proposal.

Sortition is, I believe, one of the first political ideas I defended in my short life. I remember quite well how I first arrived at this idea, during a high school lesson on Athenian institutions, which offered an overview of the workings of this unique system where members of the legislative and judicial assemblies — the Boule and the Heliaia — were chosen by lot, using a machine called the kleroterion. I was surprised that we used the same word — democracy — for both this system of chance and our own, elective system. Discovering philosophy two years later, I came to the same conclusion. Aristotle wrote that “it is considered democratic for magistracies to be assigned by lot and oligarchic for them to be elective” (Politics). Centuries later, Enlightenment philosophers wholeheartedly agree. Montesquieu wrote: “Suffrage by lot is in the nature of democracy. Lot is a way of electing that offends no one; it leaves each citizen a reasonable hope of serving their country” (The Spirit of the Laws). Rousseau agreed: “The way of lot is more in the nature of democracy” (The Social Contract).

Intrigued by these short phrases, which didn’t seem to bother many people, I then embarked on further reading. Allow me to mention two works that particularly struck me at the time. First, Bernard Manin’s Principles of Representative Government (1995). The philosopher recounts the rise of an electoral system that conquered the world following the great revolutions and clearly explains the aristocratic character of this regime that usurped the name of democracy. Next came Jacques Rancière’s Hatred of Democracy (2005), whose impassioned prose undeniably sparked enthusiasm in my young alter ego. Democracy, Rancière emphasizes, is a scandal: “Democracy means first and foremost this: an anarchic ‘government’” — without any claim to distinction — “founded on nothing other than the absence of any right to govern. […] The scandal lies there: a scandal for distinguished people who cannot accept that their birth, their seniority, or their knowledge should have to bow to the law of fate.” Isn’t impartial chance the best option for every citizen to participate in the exercise of political power — a guarantee that this power will not be monopolized?
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Filed under: Athens, Books, Elections, History, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Addressing the Limitations of Election and Sortition With Jury-Based Deliberative Democracy

Posted on October 20, 2025 by kkoreilly

I recently finished a draft paper on sortition, arguing for three hybrid systems that use large, randomly selected juries to choose from among bills and appointees proposed by elected legislators.

The discussions on this forum have helped shape my ideas, and I would greatly appreciate any feedback.

Abstract: Randomly selected representative bodies have the potential to address seemingly intractable problems with electoral systems. However, existing designs are at risk of becoming polarized, insular, and corrupt like elected legislatures. I propose three systems based on short-term, evaluative, conclusive, and multi-choice juries, which are supported by contemporary and historical precedent. These large random juries choose between options proposed by elected legislators, reducing gridlock and polarization. This hybrid approach leverages the differing strengths of politicians and jurors, separating partisan proposers and dispassionate deciders to make both more effective. The three proposed designs address the limitations of both pure sortition and election, achieving the responsiveness and equality of sortition, while retaining the expertise and participation of election. First, deliberative law uses juries to choose agenda items and bills from among those proposed by legislators. Second, deliberative appointment uses juries to choose from among candidates nominated by legislators for judicial and independent executive positions. Finally, a deliberative senate is selected through deliberative appointment in each region. These designs of deliberative government provide a pragmatic pathway for testing and adoption by retaining existing systems while addressing their flaws.

Filed under: Academia, Proposals, Sortition | 73 Comments »

The Shared Center: Awakening our Better Angels

Posted on October 16, 2025 by Nicholas Gruen

It’s finally out!

Today, I’m releasing the first three of what will be a series of 20 short videos.  Two years in the making, they seek to present a book’s worth of ideas, but in a more accessible and contemporary format. 

I’m hoping you’ll consider helping me get the word out!

The videos explore two related ideas:

1.   Elections represent the people. So do lotteries – as used in juries.

  • Elections build polarisation and culture-war into our politics. They frame politics as a contest, rather than open dialogue or even genuine persuasion.
  • Juries frame politics as dialogue and solving problems in ways most of us can live with.
  • We already have them in our judicial branch. We must build them into our political decision-making – as Michigan has begun to with its Independent Citizens’ Redistricting Commission and Belgium has with standing citizen assemblies and parliamentary committees involving citizens chosen by lottery.

2.   Open competition – for political office or promotion within organisations – centres leadership around self-interest. 

  • Leaving other human capabilities and virtues unrewarded – listening to, involving and considering others.
  • The alternative is ‘bottom-up meritocracy’. It delivered widely celebrated stability and competence to Venice’s republic for five hundred years and governs Wikipedia today.

More on the website here. And the full playlist of the videos as they’re released is here.

Filed under: Elections, Juries, Sortition, video | Leave a comment »

More Edmund Griffiths on sortition

Posted on October 8, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Edmund Griffiths, a long-time sortition advocate, has been pushing for sortition in the infighting-torn YourParty. It turns out he’s been writing a book called Sortition and Socialist Democracy to be published by Palgrave Macmillan. Griffiths also has a new article in the Morning Star discussing the sortition-related ongoings at YourParty, and in particular the fact that it turns out that the number of allotted delegates in the YourParty conference is going to be 13,000.

Your Party launch conference: the sortition of the 13,000

EDMUND GRIFFITHS makes a robust defence of sortition, the chosen method of picking attendees for the new left party’s inaugural conference from the membership at random, but sounds the alarm on the eye-watering number of suggested delegates

[A]n especially exciting plot twist [in the YourParty thriller] came in mid-September, with the announcement that delegates to the inaugural Your Party conference will be chosen by sortition.

This system — where members of decision-making bodies are picked at random — is most familiar from its use in ancient Athens and in a modern jury. The Athenians, indeed, seem to have regarded it as simple common sense that democracies choose their ruling bodies using a lottery: only oligarchies prefer to elect them.
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Filed under: Applications, Books, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Bellon: Citizens’ conventions against democracy

Posted on October 8, 2025 by Yoram Gat

André Bellon is a former French politician, a member of the French national assembly in the 1980’s and the early 1990’s, and the founder of the reformist organization, the Association for a constitutional assembly. He writes the following in Revue Politique et Parlementaire. [Original in French, Google translation with some touchups.]

Members of parliament in favor of “citizens’ conventions” want, under the pretext of democracy, to place universal suffrage, an expression of popular sovereignty, under supervision.

Like the infamous sea serpent, we periodically see the resurgence of calls for the famous “citizens’ conventions,” formed by randomly selected individuals, supervised by experts, presenting themselves as spokespersons for the people. For their promoters, this represents a democratic revolution; in fact, it is a trick for mobilizing citizens without any real political power, or even for eliminating all popular sovereignty.

Originally, this proposal was particularly supported by experts who – perhaps by chance – saw themselves as leaders of these conventions. Didn’t one of them naively declare that he was struck by the fact that at the end of the debates, those drawn by lot found themselves, for the most part, in agreement with the experts?
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Filed under: Elections, Press, Sortition | 2 Comments »

EqualityByLot Contributors: Can your contributions be used for sortition GPTs?

Posted on September 29, 2025 by Jochen Krattenmacher

I am currently working on building a custom GPT with expertise in sortition. I am not an AI expert: I am simply using the custom GPT feature by ChatGPT, where I am adding a knowledge base consisting of texts about sortition. That’s it – plus a few basic instructions to inform the GPT’s behavior. You can find up-to-date links to the GPT on my homepage, as well as information on its knowledge base and instructions.

The idea is simple:

  1. For newcomers: anyone curious about lottocracy can ask it questions (e.g., “What are the historical precedents?”, “What about experts?”), and get helpful answers.
  2. For advocates: it can also help us – the people already convinced – by generating talking points, suggesting how to respond to objections, or adapting explanations to different audiences. In short: a digital sparring partner to sharpen our arguments and make advocacy easier.

The purpose is not to replace discussion, but to lower barriers: to make it easier for newcomers to quickly get informed, and to give advocates a 24/7 assistant in the work of making the advantages of sortition more broadly known. The GPT is and will always be freely accessible (no charge).

Equality by Lot is a rich public archive of arguments related to sortition. Being able to use this knowledge for a sortition GPT obviously would be helpful.

That’s why I would like to ask:

Would contributors here be comfortable with their posts being used as part of the knowledge base for such a (freely accessible) GPT?

Of course, if anyone prefers their posts not to be included, that will be respected. If you do not indicate your agreement (either here in the comments or via email), I won’t include them. Since I do not want to monopolize this space, it would be helpful if you could also make clear whether your agreement is only in respect to my project or in respect to any freely available sortition advocacy GPT.

Just to stress this point: I believe the best way forward is to make the data broadly available so that any sortition advocate can create their own version of a Sortition GPT. Again, I am not an AI expert, but I suspect that there would be value in tailoring GPTs to local contexts. One person might want a model fine-tuned for the German-speaking world. Another might prefer a version focused on Athenian democracy, or on contemporary citizens’ assemblies and empirical research.

Of course, any feedback or thoughts on this project are highly welcome!

Filed under: Sortition | Tagged: , , , , | 8 Comments »

Activists blast the “the anti-democratic ‘sortition’ method”

Posted on September 27, 2025 by Yoram Gat

The “World Socialist Web Site” has a report about a recent rally in which Zarah Sultana, a co-founder of YourParty, spoke. The piece goes into some detail about the infighting in YourParty and mentions the sortition issue.

Tina Becker, from the “Why Marx?” group and a member of the Your Party “proto-branch” in Sheffield, asked Sultana about the anti-democratic “sortition” method being imposed by Corbyn’s “Organising Committee” to select delegates to the founding conference. Becker explained it meant “We can’t put forward motions, we can’t put forward amendments. There will be a lottery system to choose delegates.” She asked Sultana, “Should the regional meetings be able to vote and have amendments? Should we not be the ones who decide how Your Party should be run and not the six MPs, and what are you trying to do to change that?”

Sultana replied, “I too am quite critical of sortition, but that is what has been announced for the conference, and so we need to make sure it’s democratic. And I think there’s a way to still do that.”

Her remarks made clear there would be no organised challenge to Corbyn’s anti-democratic stitch-up. She did not and could not explain how delegates randomly selected based on “gender, region and background” could be “made democratic”. Sortition is being employed to block members from exercising democratic control, preventing them from nominating delegates who are accountable and who best reflect their views, suppressing any political challenge to Corbyn’s (and Sultana’s) unelected cliques.

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

Sortition in YourParty

Posted on September 22, 2025 by Yoram Gat

YourParty is an attempt to create a new left-wing party in the UK. The attempt seems to be in a lot a trouble due to infighting. One of the causes, or perhaps the symptoms, of the infighting is a struggle around the idea of employing sortition for selecting delegates to the founding conference of the party. This idea may have originated in, or at least given a non-negligible push by, a proposal made by Edmund Griffiths.

The official website of YourParty says:

In November, thousands of in-person founding conference delegates will be chosen by lottery to ensure a fair balance of gender, region, and background. These delegates will have a big responsibility – to debate the founding documents, propose amendments and vote on them at the conference. The final decision will be up to all members through an online, secure, one-member-one-vote system.

This statement, it seems, represents the position of one faction of the YourParty organization. However, other elements are opposed to the idea. One of those elements is an organization called the “Alliance for Workers’ Liberty”. On its website, it has an article expressing its displeasure with the idea:

For democracy, against sortition

How and when, or even if, the “Your Party” conference will be convened is unclear as of now. But the main current proposal for it is “sortition” – that those who can attend the conference and vote will be chosen at random from the membership. We believe that this method, like the e-plebiscites proposed to supplement it, is undemocratic, and having delegates elected after deliberation in local groups is much better.

Sortition is vulnerable to people who have signed up for individual reasons and have no real day-to-day involvement in activity or discussion. Especially in a party as amorphous as this one, delegates being selected at random from the membership allows for landlords, say, or transphobes, to decide on its policy. The same person would probably not be elected by a branch.

New activists can easily be deflected by finer details of amendments, smooth speeches or technical points in meeting procedure. The best guard against that is to have experienced and capable democrats who know how to argue – and how to protest when the meeting is not being run democratically – and procedures which enable new young activists constantly to learn those skills (in a way that a randomly-selected delegate to a single conference can’t possibly learn).

Filed under: Proposals, Sortition | 10 Comments »

Hallam: Sortition is democracy

Posted on September 20, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Roger Hallam, a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, recently released from a year-long stay in jail where he was serving a sentence for criminal political activities, has been a sortition advoacate for some time. Hallam has a new forceful article in The New Stateman (and a new book). Unlike other authors, for Hallam, sortition is not an add-on. It is democracy. If memory serves, Hallam is the most high-profile consistent advocate for sortition to date.

Hallam starts by a full frontal assault on elections.

Voting isn’t democratic. We need sortition

Randomly selecting people to rule would be a hell of a lot better than holding elections

[V]oting and elections do not, and never have, produced rule by the people. What they produce is oligarchy – rule by the few. Don’t take my word for it. This was standard political knowledge from ancient times up to the French Revolution. What you got with voting and elections was a few people in charge – obviously! Because, as everyone who observes what actually happens knows, so-called electoral “democracies” are always controlled by the few. Sure, if you like voting and elections and oligarchies that’s fine. They have their pros and cons, but don’t delude yourself and others that you are a democrat. You are not.
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Filed under: Books, Elections, History, Press, Sortition | 5 Comments »

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