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 | 6 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 | 11 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 »

Equality among whom? Why lottocrats should build on citizenship

Posted on August 27, 2025 by Jochen Krattenmacher

One of the more sensitive questions around sortition-based democracy is who should get to participate in political decision-making. Should assemblies be drawn only from citizens? Or should everyone who lives in a country be included? I have encountered this debate many times, and just now I am in a discussion whether a political party by lottocrats should aim for a lottocracy-for-citizens or a lottocracy-for-all-residents.

Here is my take: There are good arguments for extending political power, but if we want sortition to succeed and gain broad legitimacy, it should begin with citizens.

Here is the argument:

One of the greatest selling points of sortition is that it is "process-only": It exclusively is concerned with how the demos governs itself, not what its decisions should be. This outcome-neutrality has the potential to appeal to a broad spectrum of people across political tribes. However, if the adoption of sortition becomes tied to highly polarized debates over citizenship and borders, this broad appeal is diminished. Even if a political party should succeed in establishing a lottocracy for all inhabitants, chances are that it will do so at a steep price: Many people might view that lottocracy as illegitimate, which is especially dangerous for a nascent political system whose institutions will not yet be firmly established.

There’s also a psychological lens to consider: People tend to be loss-averse. When they feel that something they value—such as the privileges attached to citizenship—is being taken away, they will resist, even if the overall outcome could benefit them. And of course, there are plenty of (wanna-be) aristocrats and monarchs out there who would be more than happy to whip up such fears to gain political advantage.
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Filed under: Elections, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Sortition and rotation, a school of self-organization

Posted on August 27, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Edmund Griffiths is a long-time advocate for sortition. Griffiths revisits the topic in the context of the new party that is in the process of formation in the UK.

The most immediate topic is the matter of a founding conference. It seems that the plan is to somehow have a procedure of mass voting: “one member one vote, it looks like having an accessible way of engaging which is both in-person and hybrid [online, presumably -YG]”. But of course the final up-or-down vote is a small part of the decision making process.

Griffiths writes:

As in most plebiscitary systems, nearly everything would come down to how the questions were worded and presented; the faceless masses, atomized and unable to suggest amendments, would vote as they were invited to. This hybrid-OMOV system would thus devolve almost all the real decision-making power on the people who hold it now—the new party’s still-invisible leadership. Naturally we don’t know all their names. But it is hardly a secret that at least some of them are (a) independent bigwigs; I would not be astonished to learn that the others include (b) leading members of left groups who have worked with the bigwigs in front organizations; and there could even be a handful of (c) mouthy individuals among them.

[I]n fairness, you could do worse. I am proud to count (a) bigwigs (well, small-time bigwigs), and (b) left group factional operators, and (c) let’s call them people who don’t hate the sound of their own voices, among my friends. But if we want something more representative, something genuinely democratic, there is only one easy and obvious way to get it: just pick the delegates at random out of the entire membership.

Griffiths then fleshes out his proposal a bit:
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Filed under: Deliberation, Elections, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 1 Comment »

Riz Ahmed’s subway take

Posted on August 25, 2025 by Yoram Gat

“Subway Takes” is a popular media series operated by Kareem Rahma with channels on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and X, each with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. In each short video Rahma interviews a person, often a celebrity of sorts, and the interviewee lays out their “take”: an idea that they present as unusual and important. In a recent episode, Rahma interviews Riz Ahmed, a fairly known actor, whose take is

We need to stop having all elections and elect leaders through a random lottery!!

Filed under: Elections, Sortition, video | 3 Comments »

A predictable critique of Guerrero’s Lottocracy

Posted on August 23, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Niko Kolodny, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley has a lengthy piece in the Boston Review which reviews Alexander Guerrero’s Lottocracy. Unsurprisingly, Kolodny is not sympathetic to the idea of sortition. Predictably, Kolodny finds ample opportunities to criticize Guerroro’s “relentlessly thorough”, eclectic argumentation.

In particular, Kolodny effectively exploits Guerrero’s reliance on the supposed inability of the public to represent its own interests without proper guidance. For example:

Guerrero imagines that each SILL [single-issue, lottery-selected legislatures] would be guided in its deliberation by a poll of those few citizens who somehow are able to take a week off of work and other responsibilities to pay attention to the five day-long discussions of the final five proposals. Again, if the powerful can, in effect, buy off the general public to support a particular electoral party, then why can’t the powerful mobilize a (again, presumably quite small) group to pay attention to the review of proposals for the Water Access and Water Quality SILL and support what they favor? No one but the powerful, one worries, would be minding the store.

Kolodny’s argument above, as well as his other arguments (e.g., his assertion that people cannot be expected to accept offers in an allotted body), are standard. He goes so far as to inflict on his readers the electoralist dogma about how “[b]y choosing some political programs and parties over others, [voters] shape the political/ideological space within which the elected representatives must operate until the next election”. A formula he quotes from Cristina Lafont and Nadia Urbinati’s The Lottocratic Mentality: Defending Democracy Against Lottocracy.

Such arguments are easily refuted and have been refuted many times. However, Guerrero’s book is not up to the task. Instead, the book makes it easy for the opponents of sortition – or more to the point, for the opponents of democracy – to rehash the old superficial talking points and present them as “a splendid and convincing recent counterpoint to arguments for lottocracy”.

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

Anti-sortition attitudes

Posted on August 12, 2025 by Yoram Gat

It is an unfortunate state of affairs that, despite the fact that proposals of empowering allotted bodies do enjoy significant popular support, most people are not mobilized into action by the idea of sortition. Much of that can no doubt be attributed to despair. There is no point in being politically attached to radical ideas since such attachment has insignificant impact on society and is bound to end in frustration, and quite possibly to being seen by friends and acquaintances as slightly unhinged.

Still, it is rather surprising that despite the unending contempt that many people heap on the existing electoralist system, or more accurately, on its outcomes and on those who act within the system, there is still a strong attachment to the idea of elections and aversion toward proposals at eliminating them altogether in favor of a sortition-based system. Of course, a long list of arguments against sortition is available, and they are endlessly regurgitated (often as if they were brand new) to justify the suspicion toward sortition. However, since all of these arguments are easily refuted, it is quite clear that the arguments are not the cause behind the aversion toward sortition, but rather that some underlying attitudes against sortition must be common, attitudes for which the arguments merely serve as rationalizations.
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Filed under: Academia, Elections, Opinion polling, Sortition | 19 Comments »

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