Talk Show Appearance

Posted on August 21, 2012 by peterstone

A few weeks ago, I got contacted by “The Point,” a weekly online panel discussion show put out by the Young Turks. The format of the show is that an expert delivers a “point” on some issue of the day, and then the panel discusses it for 15 minutes or so (with 3 points to a 45-minute show). They asked me to contribute a “point” about lotteries. The reason they asked me was because one of the panelists, Walter Kirn, had recently written an article on Obama’s decision to raffle off a dinner to a randomly-selected campaign donor. See–

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/104235/suckerball-obama-celebrity-fundraising-lottery

I originally tried making a point specifically about Obama’s lottery, but the producer of the show wanted a more general point about lotteries. The resulting show is online:

I’m at the start of the second segment (about 18 minutes into the show). The show has been up for a couple of weeks, but I’ve been traveling, and only had the time to watch it yesterday. The good news is that they give a plug both to my book and to Equality by Lot (in the closing credits). The bad news is that the discussion of my point is complete garbage. None of these idiots seem to have even heard of lotteries before me. I think the hostess might even think I invented the idea of allocating goods by lot! I plan to drop them a line, but you might want to make a few comments on Youtube.

Filed under: Distribution by lot, Press | 11 Comments »

Randomness vs. Stupidity

Posted on August 19, 2012 by Conall Boyle

Randomness vs. Stupidity is the eye-catching front cover of the latest issue of Improbable Research.

These guys have form, having picked our Sicilian friends, Pluchino et al. for their ‘IgNobel Prize’ in 2010. It was they who suggested, using maths, that we’d be no worse off using randomness to pick politicians and employees. (Earlier entries on this topic have already appeared here in equality-by-lot.)

As well as this issue devoted to this topic, the Editor, Marc Abrahams, has a 2-page spread in the London Observer, (which you can read at http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/aug/19/most-improbable-scientific-research-abrahams).

In the article, Abrahams refers to an old-ish paper by Phelan (2000) which seems to support the idea of random promotion: “random promotion systems (supposedly a baseline condition) outperformed up-or-out and relative merit-based systems …”.

I am greatly encouraged that my hobby-horse of lotteries for hiring, firing and promoting employees is supported by these studies, and that they are getting a widespread airing in mainstream media.

Now, is there anyone else who might be interested in studying ‘Lotteries for Jobs’?

Filed under: Distribution by lot, Employment | 2 Comments »

Online discussion of lottery voting

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Jon Roland writes:

I will be on along with Eric Liu, former Clinton speechwriter and adviser, and others.

Here’s the link to the topic we’ll be discussing:

http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1963&context=fss_papers

Other sites for this topic:
http://sortition.net
http://constitution.org/cs_elect.htm

Watch us on @HuffPostLive tonight, 8/13/12, 8:00pm CT live.huffingtonpost.com

Filed under: Elections, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Exclusions

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Historically, voting rights have gone through a process of expansion from being exclusive to a minority to being quite inclusive. Interestingly, proposals for sortition-based government often come with various exclusion mechanisms. Such mechanisms can be classified by the stage at which they operate:

1. Pre-selection. These exclusions operate much like exclusions from suffrage did, and still do to some extent. Some general bureaucratic criteria are defined and all those who are determined to fall within those criteria are excluded from the sortition pool. Examples are the following groups: children, felons, non-citizens, those who do not take some sort of a loyalty oath, and citizens who are not registered (to vote, or to the sortition pool).

2. At selection. Qualification tests are administered at selection time, and only those who pass them are allowed to become delegates. Examples are: literacy tests and civics tests.

3. Post-selection. These are mechanisms for removal of serving delegates. Examples are popular recall or removal by a scrutinizing body.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Sortition | 129 Comments »

Pot-Shop Lot in Arizona

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Conall Boyle

Arizona to operate medical marijuana dispensaries, including one in Sun City West.

The random selection process culled 404 applicants who were in competitive bids to get licensed in 68 of the state’s “community health analysis areas.” Slots for another 29 areas drew only one applicant each.

You can find out more about this fun-lottery at:
http://www.yourwestvalley.com/suncitywest/article_fb6529b8-e0fd-11e1-ac8f-001a4bcf887a.html

Filed under: Distribution by lot | Leave a comment »

Open letter: Sortition as a tool of democracy

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Dear Mr. Scialabba,

I am writing to you following your article “Plutocratic vistas: America’s crisis of democracy”. I am a committed sortition supporter and advocate and a member of a group of like-minded people. We have a blog – Equality by Lot (https://equalitybylot.wordpress.com) – devoted to discussing and promoting sortition as a tool of democracy.

I liked your article a great deal. Articles discussing sortition in one way or another appear occasionally in the mainstream press (you can find a running record of such articles on Equality by Lot – the most prominent of these is Joe Klein’s 2010 Time article ”How Can a Democracy Solve Tough Problems?”). I think yours was substantially different.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 22 Comments »

Scialabba: Plutocratic vistas: America’s crisis of democracy

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Yoram Gat

George Scialabba writes in the LA Review of Books and in Salon about the history of plutocratic control of elections in the U.S. and offers sortition as an alternative.

Scialabba has the following excerpt from the 1897 book Equality by Edward Bellamy:

“But why did not the people elect officials and representatives of their own class, who would look out for the interests of the masses?” […]
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Elections, Fiction, History, Juries, Press, Proposals, Sortition | Leave a comment »

Japan’s energy future too important to be left to experimental polling method

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Yoram Gat

An opinion piece in The Mainichi:

Yoroku: Japan’s energy future too important to be left to experimental polling method

Once upon a time, in ancient Athens, state policy was decided not by elected representatives, but by a great assembly of all eligible citizens. Five hundred of these citizens were also chosen by lot for the Bouletai, or council, which spent time deliberating the issues facing Athens and drawing up bills for the assembly’s consideration.

In the modern world, a small-scale version of this selection by lot and the group deliberation that was such an important part of Athenian democracy is being resurrected by U.S. academics in the form of deliberative polls.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Press, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Popular Sovereignty Network

Posted on July 8, 2012 by keithsutherland

I attended the first meeting of the Popular Sovereignty Network yesterday at Queen Mary, University of London. The first talk, by Melissa Lane (politics, Princeton) was on Athenian democracy. Professor Lane took issue with the assumption that the Athenian franchise for office-holding was open to all male citizens over 30, drawing attention to the Solonic prohibition on the thetes holding office (as opposed to participating in the assembly and courts). The source for the Solonic prohibition is Aristotle’s Politics, VII 3. Scholars like Hansen and Sinclair claim that by the 4th Century the prohibition had become a ‘dead letter’, but there is no real evidence for this.

Her talk then took an unusual turn when she shifted the focus to the election of (some) officeholders, on the basis of universal (by Athenian standards) suffrage. I questioned her on the number of elected offices and she claimed it was 100 (out of around 700); nevertheless she used this to argue that Athenian democracy was not so different from its modern Schumpeterian form, in which all citizens elect officeholders and then hold them to account.

This was all a little odd (why focus on the minority of elected officials?), and not particularly convincing, so perhaps she was just trying to stir things up. But I did find her contrast between office-holding and assembly/courts to be illuminating. She disputed Hansen’s claim that ‘ruling and being ruled in turn’ referred to rotation in office, claiming that it referred more to the assembly and the courts. Jury service did involve very significant rotation and, with the 4th century innovation of the nomothetai, serious legislative power was involved. Membership of the council was a collegial office, so Aristotle’s remark could have referred to this (Hansen claims that most eligible citizens would have served on the council at least once), but note her earlier comments on the Solonic prohibition.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Athens, Elections, History, Juries, Participation, Sortition | 2 Comments »

Nissani: Cheers for Direct Democracy

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Yoram Gat

Dr. Moti Nissani writes in The Dissident Voice:

Revolutionary strategists must ask themselves: How can we best structure our own movement? And: What kind of political framework should we aim for, once we relegate the Banking-Militarist Complex to the dustbin of history? The answer to both questions is the same: genuine (or direct) democracy.

Democracy, for the Greeks who coined the word, meant “power of the people” or “rule of the people.” Perhaps the best-known example of a genuine democracy in a highly-advanced, highly-literate, polity, is Athens and its sister democracies of Ancient Greece. There, all significant political, legal, and judicial decisions were made directly by the people. Democratic Athens went to war if, and only if, the majority so voted; a man was exiled, or condemned to death, if, and only if, his fellow citizens so decreed.

It is a typical reformist treatment of the Athenian system. Sortition is discussed in the context of juries, but its application to political offices is given barely a mention:

The Athenians knew that power-seekers could not be trusted, so they filled many important public offices by lot. Moreover, most office holders maintained their positions for extremely short durations. Athens thereby bypassed, to a certain extent, a key problem in all other extant political systems: The ascendancy of the psychopaths.

Filed under: Athens, History, Participation, Sortition | 3 Comments »

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