Sortition Q & A

Q: What is sortition?

A: Sortition (also called demarchy) is rule by lot, in which our leaders-- executive, legislative and judicial-- are selected not from one of two duopolistic political parties after heavily financed campaigns only by those who are able and bother to vote, but rather randomly, much like juries, from the pool of all citizens for short single terms.  No campaigns, no campaign finance, no career politicians.  Just citizens like you and me.

Q: You mean you really want to replace the president, congress, supreme court justices with people selected by some random process?

A: Yes.

Q: Why should we trust random schmoes off the street to run the government?  Shouldn't experts be in charge of it?   

A: Experts ARE in charge of the government. That's the problem.  Experts gave us socialism for the rich, austerity for everyone else. They gave us deregulation which gave us financialization which gave us the financial crisis, then-- though "change we can believe in" is what we elected-- they put the experts of financialism back in charge of "fixing"  the financial crisis.  They fixed it all right.  For themselves.  They gave us endless wars, the surveillance state, big tech, globalism.  They refuse to do anything about the planetary crisis that their capitalism has created. They will never give us Medicare for All.  They will never make the members of their class pay for what they have done to us and to our planet. Trust me, they will continue to make themselves heard.  It's beyond time for the victims of professional expertism to have their share of the say.  

Q: If we are changing the way we make decisions, why continue to entrust it to only a small select group of people?  Isn't that what we already have?  

A: The difference between the body produced by electoral politics and that produced by sortition is that the former is composed of a class of self-selected highly funded participants (called politicians) who tend to come from the same class, whereas the body selected by sortition is something like a representative sample of the entire population sampled for a survey or a poll.  Ideally, that body if selected truly randomly is a representation of the population it comes from. It is us, both statistically -- and literally when we ourselves are actually selected for it.  

Politicians can be bought.  The members of a body selected by sortition could also technically be bought-- there's no guarantee that attempts to buy them would not be made and sometimes succeed-- but whereas in our current system, money is what sustains the careers of politicians-- those most successful at attracting money are those who are elected year after year-- in sortition, terms are short and they are limited by chance.  Successive terms for an individual could be prohibited by legislature to make political ownership of those in office less attractive both to the selected and to would be donors.  Moreover it would be the prerogative and duty of those governing by sortition to legislate against such corruption with penalties and consequences for those who engage in it.

Q:  But why leave decisions in the hands of the few at all?  Why not go all the way and implement direct democracy, in which everybody gets a say in every decision of government?

A: Sortition has several advantages over direct democracy-- if the goal of government is to represent the desires of all of its citizens.  Sortition, designed well, creates a governing body representative of the citizenry in every particular.  To avoid building in elitism such as requiring ownership of property or possession of a driver's license for the pool of names to select individuals from, I would be in favor of the population being as broad and inclusive as possible-- e.g., from Social Security rolls or the census.  Only in this way can government begin to guarantee that it will reflect the perspectives, needs, desires and experiences of all of its citizens.  It would be the duty of the body to provide funds, statutes, infrastructure to ensure that participation of all selected citizens is not a burden.

Direct democracy, on the other hand, far from being for everybody, is once again practically speaking only for the self-selected-- those who live online, political hobbyists, trolls, to say nothing of the familiar band of elites and political operatives who would be busily funding think tanks and devising ways to make the process as exclusive as it can be.  By definition direct democracy excludes the viewpoints of the non-political, the disenfranchised, the disillusioned, or those too busy trying to survive. It would replace the tyranny of electoral politics with the tyranny of elective politics.  Far from removing the influence of money it's inconceivable that vote buying would not be rampant without some change from the venal society we live in. 

Direct democracy would not ask anything of its participants other than motivation, technology and opportunity to vote.  There would be no quality control over the process which without safeguards in place would be corrupted by the same owner class that has ruined American electoral politics as is.  

Here are just three reasons why sortition is better than so called direct democracy:

Duty - As with Jury selection, selection for office in one of our government branches (executive, legislative or judicial-- for starters) would be a privilege that would intrinsically require and I believe inspire a sense of duty from those selected for it. Duty would be thrust upon the selected, not a prerequisite for participation.  Individuals would be tasked with representing not a geographical district but their own immediate communities, families, economic class, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, occupation, education, etc.  By voting their own interests, conscience, beliefs and desires, they will tend to vote automatically on behalf of those like them who their very selection if done properly is designed to represent. 

Informed Deliberation - The purpose of assembling a body for executive, legislative and judicial decision making is to empower representative citizens with equal access to questions and answers about the issues facing us at home and around the globe.  Equally informed, the representatives can bring their own perspectives to the debate and vote according to their experience of those they represent.    Direct democracy may recommend, but it does not require informed deliberation of those who choose to participate in it.

Accountability- A singular advantage of sortition over direct democracy is that those empowered by random selection to decide will either personally (if their votes are public) or collectively (if their votes are anonymous) take credit or blame for their decisions.  Individual votes need not be publicized, but those selected to serve will share in the collective responsibility for the outcomes of their deliberations in any case.  Those who participate in direct democracy would presumably have the luxury of melting into the crowd and could use the cloak of anonymity however it suits them-- conditions ripe for bribery, mischief and corruption.

Q: How would it work?  Who would be in charge of it?  How do we get from where we are to sortition?

A: I imagine that sortition could be enacted most peacefully by public referendum.  Let's imagine that the idea of sortition catches on to the point at which there is momentum among the people of certain districts to replace the current system with it.  It could begin in some localities, spread to larger districts, perhaps eventually capturing the imagination of a state.  A successful transition within a state to selecting its legislature by sortition would likely inspire other states to give it a try. I can imagine the difference of government by truly representative bodies would set a wildfire of popular demand for it across the country.  It's almost inconceivable that a state legislature with sortition in place would not test the waters for electing representatives at the federal level by the same method.  Ultimately, the goal would be an entire legislature selected to represent not States, but states-- as in the makeup of the entire population.  Resistance to the spread of it would be fierce from those who will not yield the reins of government easily but their resistance must be overcome by the will of the people!  It could happen!

Q: Let's pretend you're not tripping balls by imagining this could ever happen.  What would keep it from devolving back into the corrupt mess we've already got?

A: Only us.