One of Bill McClellan’s readers writes in

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Google Alert netted another fine catch:

Democracy seeming like Greek to U.S.

Bill McClellan
stltoday.com, July 29, 2011

Not long ago, I wrote a column in which I suggested we select our leaders through a lottery [Stupid vs. immoral? Let’s leave governing up to chance, June 8, 2011]. We would avoid tiresome campaigns and the lies and misrepresentations therein, and we would rid ourselves of campaign contributions and the time-honored practice of buying influence and favors.

It was a whimsical idea. Or so I thought. But one of the joys of writing a newspaper column is hearing from people who know more than I do about the subjects I write about.

David C. sent me this note: “Today’s column made me think of ancient Athens, one of the most thoroughgoing democracies in western history (at least for those who weren’t slaves). They had a system of government very similar to your idea of government by lottery. As the Marxist historian C.L.R. James wrote in his essay, ‘Every Cook Can Govern’: ‘Perhaps the most striking thing about Greek democracy was that the administration (and there were immense administrative problems) was organized upon the basis of what is known as sortition, or, more easily, selection by lot. The vast majority of Greek officials were chosen by a method which amounted to putting names into a hat and appointing the ones whose names came out.'”

Filed under: Athens, Elections, Press, Proposals, Sortition | 3 Comments »

Citizen Juries institutionalized in Oregon

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Common Lot Sortitionist

From America Speaks July newsletter:

Last month, our movement saw a new victory with the institutionalization of Citizen Juries in Oregon.

On June 16, Governor Kitzhaber—with strong bipartisan support from the state House and  Senate—signed in legislation continuing the Citizens’ Initiative Review (HB 2634).  This law establishes the legal framework to provide Oregon voters with reliable, high-quality, citizen-driven information about ballot measures. When future ballot issues arise, a random sample of Oregonians—peers of the voters—will engage in pro/con deliberation and will summarize their findings in a one-page citizen statement. On the day of the election, all voters see a printed version of the citizen statement in the voter pamphlet.

Filed under: Ballot measures, Sortition | 9 Comments »

Edip Yuksel: Lotteries elections: Disinfecting democracy from lobbies

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Yoram Gat

In 1998, Edip Yuskel, “an Islamic reformer”, wrote an article proposing selecting Congress using sortition:

Every citizen who meets the qualifications enumerated in Article I, sections 2 and 3 of the Constitution could become a candidate by filling out a simple application form. This application can be automatically done during voter registration. Every registered person will have an equal chance of becoming a member of Congress. The election or selection can be conducted by mechanical devises or computers with sufficient security and supervision.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 45 Comments »

Poll finds most Americans think their government is a plutocracy

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Yoram Gat

A poll taken in May asked some pointed questions about who people feel controls government and benefits from its policies. The answers were in line with previous findings.


CBS News Poll. May 20-23, 2011. N=1,020 adults nationwide.

“How much say do you think people like yourself have about what the government does: a good deal, some, or not much?”

A good deal Some Not much Unsure
% 9 21 69 1

Continue reading →

Filed under: Opinion polling | Leave a comment »

Government quality and government selection

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Yoram Gat

[M]en err in two ways, either by ignorance or by malice.

Francesco Guicciardini, Dialogue on the Government of Florence

A model of government quality and government selection mechanism quality

The two chief desirable characteristics of government are

  • representativity (r): the government is representative when its efforts are aimed at promoting the general interests (rather than personal or narrow interests), and
  • competence (c): the government is competent when it is able to enact effective policy in accordance with its aims.

A representative, competent government enacts policy that effectively promotes the general interest.

Modeled in this way, the quality of a government is a function of its representativity and its competence, q = q(r,c), increasing in both arguments (e.g., q(r,c) = r c). The quality of a mechanism for selecting a government is measured by its tendency to produce high-quality governments.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, Sortition | 29 Comments »

Failure at ‘Green Card’ lottery

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Conall Boyle

According to the Diversity Visa Lottery website:

We regret to inform you that, due to a computer programming problem, the results of the 2012 Diversity Lottery that were previously posted on this website have been voided. They were not valid and were posted in error. Continue reading →

Filed under: Distribution by lot | 2 Comments »

newDemocracy

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Yoram Gat

newDemocracy is an Australian website that introduces itself as follows:

Citizens are seeking Parliaments that are less adversarial and less short term in outlook. The newdemocracy Foundation researches and publishes alternative democratic methods that seek to deliver this. We pursue alternatives more likely to identify common ground, end the continuous campaign, and return representatives to focus on issues, not opinion polls.
We don’t need better politicians. We need a better system.
Read about these options here, and get involved.

Under “Alternatives”, newDemocracy presents various ideas, including “Demarchy” – following John Burnheim and Brian Martin, “A Senate Drawn by Lot” – following Alex Zakaras and linking to a post by Keith Sutherland on this blog, and “The Popular Branch” – following Ethan Leib.

The force behind the website is apparently Luca Belgiorno-Nettis. The website also lists various luminaries among its supporters including Prof. Lyn Carson.

One item that I find particularly valuable is the slogan mentioned in one of the entries: Don’t Vote – It Only Encourages Them!

Filed under: Opinion polling, Participation, Proposals, Sortition | 3 Comments »

John Burnheim: To Reason Why

Posted on June 30, 2011 by keithsutherland

The recent publication of John Burnheim’s autobiography by Sidney University Press (Burnheim, 2011) coincides with improved availability of his 1985 work, Is Democracy Possible? (Burnheim, 2006). Although SUP republished the book in 2006 they have only recently made it available on Amazon.com. John very kindly sent me copies of both books, even though he knew that I would not be the most sympathetic reviewer, as we have always disagreed fundamentally on the potential of sortition in our offline exchanges.

John divides his adult life into three two-decade periods during which he moved from the priesthood through philosophy to retirement, pausing en route only to (assist in) blowing up the Sydney University philosophy department (1973) and publishing an attempt to torpedo democracy in its modern incarnation (1985).
Continue reading →

Filed under: Books, Sortition | 62 Comments »

Comment on CJs in Ireland

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Conall Boyle

Interesting observations by a randomly selected barrister (lawyer) on Citizens’ Assembly experiment in Ireland. The organisation behind it,  ‘Wethecitizens’, is non-governmental, and looks excellent. For non-Irish: Oireachtas is Government, Seanad is the Upper House, like the House of Lords. It is sad to see that this exercise did not recommend Sortition for the Seanad.

Need to work out what a citizens’ assembly is before deciding to have one

CONOR NELSON
Thu, Jun 30, 2011

OPINION: I was selected to take part in the citizens’ assembly – but what exactly is the aim of the experiment?

LAST WEEK, I was selected randomly to participate in an experimental citizens’ assembly. It met over a day and a half last weekend at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham (originally to be the seat of the Oireachtas in 1922).

I met lots of people who were engaged and pleased to be selected. The event was run by the “We the Citizens” project, funded by Atlantic Philanthropies, the organisation founded by Chuck Feeney.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Elections, Experiments, House of Lords, Participation | 1 Comment »

Karatani on sortition

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Yoram Gat

Kojin Karatani writes in his book, Transcritique (2001, translated by Sabu Kohso, p. 182ff):

There is one crucial thing we can learn from Athenian democracy in this respect. The ancient democracy was established by overthrowing tyranny and equipped itself with a meticulous device for preventing tyranny for reviving. The salient characteristic of Athenian democracy is not a direct participation of everyone in the assembly, as always claimed, but a systematic control of the administrative power. The crux was the system of lottery: to elect public servants by lottery and to surveil the deeds of public servants by means of a group of jurors who are also elected by lottery. […] My point is that the core of the system invented to stop the fixation of power in Athenian Democracy lay not in the election itself, but in the lottery. Lottery functions to introduce contingency into the magnetic power center. The point is to shake up the positions where power tends to be concentrated; entrenchment of power in administrative positions can be avoided by a sudden attack of contingency. It is only the lottery that actualizes the separation of the three powers. If universal suffrage by secret ballot, namely, parliamentary democracy, is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the introduction of a lottery should be deemed the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Disappointingly, Karatani steps away from sortition, without providing a real reason – off-handedly blaming “the people” for not being ready for a radical solution:

Can we choose all representative by lottery in all elections? That is not realistic; the system itself would be too arbitrary to gain the trust of the people.

Instead, he offers a lottery among top vote getters, claiming it will reduce factionalism, and making a vague unexplained promise that such a mechanism will “free the power center from fixation in the long run”:

[W]hat is preferable to us would be to choose the most crucial post by lottery: namely choosing three candidates by secret vote (three in one choice) and then finally electing one by lottery. Because the last and most crucial stage is determined by contingency, factional disputes or conflicts over successors would not make sense.

Filed under: Athens, Books, Elections, Proposals, Theory | 1 Comment »

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