Sortition | Equality by lot

Seminar: CAs instead of elections?

Posted on March 11, 2023 by Owen Shaffer

Democracy Without Elections is sponsoring a seminar titled “Citizens’ Assemblies and Lottery Selection as the Democratic Alternative to Elections.” It will be led by Terry Bouricius who, along with David Schecter, developed the nested assemblies model that was the basis for their implementation in the Ostbelgien region of Belgium. Topics include:

Why elections don’t work
History of democratic lotteries (sortition)
Why replacing elections with lotteries does not work
Transition possibilities from elections to lotteries
Using lotteries in boards, co-ops, condo associations, etc.

In this 4 hour seminar, you can review what you know and deepen your knowledge. Invite other folks who may be interested!

It will be held on Saturday 8 April at 12:30pm Eastern, 9:30 am Pacific, 6:30 pm Central Europe. Sign up here in advance.

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

“A Random Group of People” editorial in Seattle and town hall on Citizens’ Assemblies

Posted on March 5, 2023 by Ahmed R. Teleb

the Stranger, perhaps Seattle’s most widely read newspaper, has recently published an editorial by Ansel Herz, a former Congressional staffer in DC, now serving as communications director for Democracy Next, recently founded by Claudia Chwalisz (of OECD & Parisian Citizens’ Assembly fame).

In fact, this is what “democracy” actually is. In the 5th century B.C., the Greeks of ancient Athens coined demokratia to describe their carefully designed lottery system, under which any citizen was able to serve in parliamentary, administrative, and judicial bodies. Demokratia is not politicians, elections, and parties; the Greeks would have abhorred those, as many ordinary people—perhaps even you—do to this day.

“Their greatest gift was their passion for democracy,” observed the Trinidadian writer C.L.R. James in his 1956 essay, “Every Cook Can Govern”. The Athenians believed that elections were undemocratic; Aristotle called them “oligarchic.” It’s common sense that when only a handful of people can hold power, corruption is likely.

The Greeks recognized that whoever runs for elected office in the first place usually projects a peculiar power-seeking personality type. Having spent a lot of time around candidates who’ve won and lost, let me tell you: the Greeks were right.

After introducing sortition, Herz mentioned America in One Room, the Irish Citizens’ Assembly, and Brussels’s recent introduction of its own permanent CA.

In 2019’s “America In One Room”, for example, Stanford researchers organized an assembly of 526 Americans to deliberate for a long weekend. The group did not combust from anger and tension, nor did the participants retreat to their bubbles and cling to their beliefs. They found common ground around issues of trade, wages, immigration, and more. Democrats reported a 13-point increase in positive feelings toward Republicans; Republicans felt 14 points more favorably toward Democrats. Ninety-five percent of participants said they “learned a lot about people very different from me,” and 98 percent said they found the experience “valuable.”
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, meeting, Participation, Proposals, Sortition, Theory | Tagged: citizens' assemblies, Claudia Chwalisz, Democracy Next, Press, random selection, Seattle, sortition | 10 Comments »

Using sortition to select Board Directors

Posted on March 5, 2023 by Owen Shaffer

Democracy Without Elections uses sortition to select all directors of its governing board since the beginning, December 2020. Are there any other boards that exclusively use sortition? Is sortition used to choose members of governing bodies in nonprofits, education or business anywhere else? Are there examples of using sortition to select some members?

Filed under: Applications, Sortition | Tagged: Board of directors, Organizations | 4 Comments »

Hugh Pope on the Belgian Citizens’ Dialogue

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Yoram Gat

Hugh Pope has a piece in the The New European about the permanent allotted body in the German speaking community in Belgium.

If we are trying to fix our “broken politics”, is the solution really just another set of politicians? If the electoral system is at fault, might the process of government work better if it were run by a group of randomly selected citizens?

Liesa Scholzen is a politician whose constituents are the 70,000 German speakers on Belgium’s eastern border. People with an interest in new political systems are paying close attention to Scholzen’s hilltop parliament in Eupen, Ostbelgien. That’s because in 2021, as part of its Citizens’ Dialogue initiative, Ostbelgien inaugurated the world’s first official, permanent legislative body chosen not by votes, but by lottery.

“The Citizens’ Dialogue” […] is led by a standing council of citizens, drawn by lot. The 24-member council serves for 18 months, and they choose the topics which are then debated by separate Citizens’ Assemblies. These assemblies have 25-50 members, also chosen by lot, who make their recommendations following two to three days of deliberation. Members meet in the evening or at weekends, and receive expenses plus €50 to €95 (£44-£84) per session. All participants are chosen from the German-speaking community.

An interesting paragraph discusses the matter of the rate of acceptance:

[O]nly 5% to 10% of invitations to attend Citizens’ Assemblies are initially accepted. This is because people have no knowledge of them, no time to spare or just think the invitation letters are a hoax. Organisers usually ensure that those who do volunteer are representative through “stratification”, a second layer of random selection that balances gender, language, age, education and other criteria. But [activist Juliane] Baruck from Es geht LOS [a German organization promoting sortition] goes out knocking on the doors of those who don’t respond. “We trust the lottery to get a truly representative sample, so we keep trying,” she said. “I don’t try to convince those chosen. I ask them: ‘What do you need to join in?’ Already, we’ve got the positive response rate up to 22%.”

Continue reading →

Filed under: Applications, Press, Sortition | 26 Comments »

The Trans-Atlanticist Podcast Features Sortition

Posted on February 27, 2023 by Ahmed R. Teleb

Antoine Vergne (of Mission Publique) and I were invited guests on the American cultural center Hamburg’s podcast for two episodes over the last two weeks.

The discussion was much too short to be anything new to regular readers of EbL, but I wanted to post it as another sign of the mainstream acceptance of the idea of sortition. Another disclaimer, the Amerikazentrum is a propaganda outfit for the US & German foreign ministries. So, as expected, the framing of the show starts with cliched talking points about Brexit, Ukraine, autocracy v. democracy, etc…

I think the discussion went slightly beyond the “representation” argument. In particular, Antoine made some interesting points about the non-adversarial nature of assemblies as compared to referenda. Quite interesting for me was his story about how he happened upon “Stochacracy.” As an undergraduate, I believe, he wrote a research paper that ended with the line: “Stochocrats of the world unite!”

My own intervention was not particularly interesting but I tried to reference a variety of literature including democratic critiques of allotted minipulbics in the show notes.

Part 1: https://thetrans-atlanticist.podigee.io/s4e2-a-better-democracy-is-possible-part-1-an-introduction-to-sortition-and-deliberation

Part 2: https://thetrans-atlanticist.podigee.io/s4e3-a-better-democracy-is-possible-part-2-from-theory-to-real-world-application

Let me know your thoughts, and perhaps we could crowd source a list of recent podcasts & videos on sortition.

Filed under: Deliberation, meta, Participation, Sortition | Tagged: citizens' assemblies, democracy, podcast, random selection, sortition | 14 Comments »

Reflections on the representativeness of citizens assemblies and similar innovations

Posted on February 22, 2023 by paulnollen

A blog post by Tiago C. Peixoto and Paolo Spada.

Introduction

For proponents of deliberative democracy, the last couple of years could not have been better. Propelled by the recent diffusion of citizens’ assemblies, deliberative democracy has definitely gained popularity beyond small circles of scholars and advocates. From CNN to the New York Times, the Hindustan Times (India), Folha de São Paulo (Brazil), and Expresso (Portugal), it is now almost difficult to keep up with all the interest in democratic models that promote the random selection of participants who engage in informed deliberation. A new “deliberative wave” is definitely here.

But with popularity comes scrutiny. And whether the deliberative wave will power new energy or crash onto the beach, is an open question. As is the case with any democratic innovation (institutions designed to improve or deepen our existing democratic systems), critically examining assumptions is what allows for management of expectations and, most importantly, gradual improvements.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Academia, Deliberation, Sortition | 11 Comments »

Bailly: The democratic quality of European Citizens’ panels

Posted on February 22, 2023 by paulnollen

“The democratic quality of European Citizens’ panels” is an interesting study of the citizen panels convened within the framework of the Conference on the Future of Europe which took place in 2021. The study by Jessy Bailly involved interviews with dozens of participants in the panels.

The study highlights some of the problems of the lack of an acceptable design, resulting in biased outcomes. Examples of problematic aspects of the design are the use of volunteers, the way the experts are appointed, the overrepresentation of a stratum of their choice (youth in this case), and the lack of transparency of the sortition method.

Some excerpts:

When I surveyed the citizens, many praised the “diversity of people” within the panels. Others emphasised the lack of representativeness of the citizens’ panels, with at least 5 of the 31 citizens interviewed insisting on it. One of them was a German citizen in her 30s: “You should pay attention to a greater diversity of people and not only people who are pro-Europe. There should be a greater selection of different people, different social classes and also religions.” It is worth noting that the “social class” criterion had to be respected (through the prism of occupation). However, no ethnic or religious criteria were considered.

Continue reading →

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

Ovadya: Controlling AI via allotted bodies

Posted on February 19, 2023 by Yoram Gat

Hélène Landemore has recently proposed using AI to manage the deliberation of allotted bodies. Aviv Ovadya proposes the opposite:

Technologist and researcher Aviv Ovadya isn’t sure that generative AI can be governed, but he thinks the most plausible means of keeping it in check might just be entrusting those who will be impacted by AI to collectively decide on the ways to curb it.

That means you; it means me. It’s the power of large networks of individuals to problem-solve faster and more equitably than a small group of individuals might do alone (including, say, in Washington). This is not naively relying on the wisdom of the crowds — which has been shown to be problematic — but the use of so-called deliberative democracy, an approach that involves selecting people through sortition to be representative (such that everyone in the population being impacted has an equal chance of being chosen), and providing them with an environment that enables them to deliberate effectively and make wise decisions. This means compensation for their time, access to experts and stakeholders, and neutral facilitation.

Either way, Ovadya is busily trying to persuade all the major AI players that collective intelligence is the way to quickly create boundaries around AI while also giving them needed credibility. Take OpenAI, says Ovadya. “It’s getting some flack right now from everyone,” including over its perceived liberal bias. “It would be helpful [for the company] to have a really concrete answer” about how it establishes its future policies.

Filed under: Academia, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Goodbye Elections. Hello Democracy.

Posted on February 18, 2023 by Yoram Gat

Goodbye Elections. Hello Democracy. is a documentary film being produced and directed by Adam Cronkright and expected to be released in 2024.

Goodbye Elections. Hello Democracy. tells the true story of 30 everyday Americans, selected by lottery, trying to find common ground on the most charged issue in the most divided state—while a bitter election rages around them.

The text on website seems to indicate, as does the title, that the film is taking a fairly radical attitude:

Why have I never heard of this?

Democratic lotteries have typically been pigeonholed in modern times as merely a way to inject public input into our current dysfunctional and distrusted political system, instead of being framed as a way to transform it.

For the first time ever, this film stands to change that.

Filed under: Action, Elections, Sortition | 6 Comments »

Metaverse vs. Democracy

Posted on February 18, 2023 by Owen Shaffer

I’ve published an article that explores the current and future challenge that technology and the metaverse brings to elections. I believe I’m the first to explore the connection. I would appreciate any comments and suggestions, as well as collaborators in developing a more in-depth piece.

The in-depth piece would likely have 4 major perspectives: