Wild Times

When pigs fly out of a monkey's butt playing the Hallelujah chorus on harmonicas, I think that counts as news.  When the New York Times publishes an opinion piece suggesting sortition-- selecting our legislators, judges and executives randomly from among ourselves-- as a replacement for the American system of elections, that's the equivalent.  Such a piece by Adam Grant of the Wharton School (Trump's alma mater if I'm not mistaken) appeared recently.  And it was a good piece, making a strong case for this most democratic alternative to politics as usual starting with the provocative title ("The Worst People Run for Office.  It's Time for a Better Way"), giving a good definition, offering plenty of examples of sortition already in practice around the globe, and citing studies demonstrating both the built in flaws of letting psychopaths run government and evidence for the superiority of randomly selected leaders. 

While Grant, like me proposes sortition as a method of selecting not just a citizens council of advisors to the legislature as is commonly proposed but the legislature itself and even the executive and judicial offices, our flavors of sortition are not identical. While Grant seems to gently suggest that perhaps a civics exam might be given to those who want to volunteer to be in the pool of candidates for selection by lot, I would advocate for sortition as the basis of a new civics. I am for mandatory inclusion of every adult living in the US (including those in prison and the undocumented) and perhaps even a certain number of adolescents. Certainly there could be exceptions but in order make the selection as scientifically representative as possible, the qualifications should be broad.   (and an effort should be made to represent the demographic of those who choose not to serve.)    

But before we bicker over the finer points of the logistics of the process, don't get ready for sortition just yet.  If you set your foot into the comment section of Grant's essay, those disposed or convinced to the idea can be found in the weeds, but the vast preponderance of responses to this provocative think piece, this introduction to a notion of an answer to the complaints about the widely agreed upon disaster of American politics is "don't even start to go there".   Other themes emerge. Discussion is closed on the article but, setting aside the alarmingly common ad hominem approach as merely fallacious (to say nothing of the ostrich-like "What's wrong with what we've got?"), let us examine some other categories of objection and try to respond to each. 

Sortition is not serious. It's impossible.  It will never happen so why waste space with words about it. -  Nothing pushes my buttons quite like the impulse on hearing or reading about a well-thought out well expressed novel or ambitious idea for government than that it should be rejected on the basis that it falls short of some undefined given standard of "seriousness".  "Not serious" is never about intellectual rigor or impassioned belief.  It is always shorthand for "deviant from conventional wisdom and therefore not allowed."  It's a conversation ender.  Grant's article is a conversation starter so although flight is almost always the most common type of reaction to new ideas, terminators must be rejected out of hand in actually serious discussions such as the one Grant is raising.  These are not arguments; these are, as one reader suggests, symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome.  Speaking of which...

Let's fix the system we have -  get rid of the Electoral college, put an end to gerrymandering, get money out of politics, abolish Citizens United, implement rank choice voting across the country. - The system we have was designed broken, and there really is no fixing it.  Every time over the past 200 years it has been tweaked in some way-- the implementation of universal suffrage, voting rights, the elimination of poll taxes, successful challenges to gerrymandered districts-- it has continuously been broken in a million other ways.  People talked about campaign finance reform for decades, and then the supreme court ruled in favor of unlimited influence of money in the Citizens United decision.  Nancy McLean's Democracy in Chains makes a very strong case that all it takes is the money of some very determined anti-democratic billionaires-- and their think tanks and political action committees and university chairs and purchase of the judiciary--  to rig the system against the will of the people. Money is why we don’t have healthcare for all and why we can pass legislation to suppress pro Palestinian speech but we can do nothing about climate change.  At best, voting is one person one vote, as if this alone will guarantee a good outcome.  In practice, those in power of both parties will manipulate the system by every means at their disposal to keep real changemakers from winning primaries and thwart the participation of as many as they can in the general election and in the national discussion.  Even at best, plurality voting means that all but the candidate with the largest number of votes lose.   Rank choice voting by definition means that when a winner is not selected by the majority, the winner is likely to be merely the second or third choice (among the self-selected slate of candidates) of a plurality.  In all cases, those who are alienated from voting or disenfranchised are unrepresented.  Sortition removes the very vulnerable process of voting from the equation to ensure actual fair representation-- which is the point!

It won't work -  Presidents need constituencies and coalitions;  The selected will become corrupt; the pool to select from are already brainwashed by q.  You need to get rid of Republicans (or Democrats) before it would work.  - This category of objection betrays a misunderstanding of what sortition accomplishes and a lack of imagination about what a world without voting could be like. Random selection of our leaders obviates the maneuvers, training, dealing, lying, ambition that come with the turf in a party system. In a world in which our leaders are chosen from ourselves rather than from a slate of self-selected careerists, there are no elections, no parties, no party apparatuses, no campaigns, no campaign finances, no campaign ads, positive or negative, no disinformation or dirty tricks.  Winning elections is not merely less important, it has no relevance at all.  If our leadership reflects us in every demographic, attribute, belief, taste, our leaders are selected from natural constituencies. Without having to be elected,  all that is left for our leaders to do is to lead as we ourselves would lead.

Yes our current system is awful but Churchill was right -- it's better than everything else.  This is obfuscation by wit.  It's also false. What has our current system done for you lately other than steer the conversation away from issues that make a difference to anyone but the psychopathic class of empty headed meritocrats?  It is a nihilistic dead-end view.  Sortition is a way forward.

Why would anyone accept someone they didn't vote for as a leader?  Yes, why do we accept those we don't vote for as leaders? Why do we accept them as party nominees?  It's a question that's not relevant to sortition, because sortition is not about voting. Sortition is not about winning, it's about representation.

What we need is competence not representation.  This is a dangerous world with a complex international situation.  Presidents have their hands on the nuclear controls.   Presidents need expertise in a wide variety of subjects -- we've seen what happens when they don't.  There is every reason to believe the world is as dangerous and complex as it is precisely because of the partisan, sectarian, stunted, stilted, unimaginative and undemocratic nature of how it is nearly universally governed by an entrenched out of touch elite across the globe.  Several months ago I listened to economist Jeffrey Sachs, a Ukraine war skeptic, giving a frank and cautionary talk about the strong correlation between the pressures of our electoral system and the pursuit of war.  The talk is no longer on YouTube  (this one from May covers similar ground), but Sachs' point was that elections force candidates to take belligerent stands and presidents to opt for military solutions over diplomatic ones as a means of appearing strong.  Diplomacy is rarely given primary consideration.  The connection was obvious as was the solution-- remove politics from leadership.  Remove the ability and the incentive for leaders to posture with the lives of American soldiers. Another strong case for sortition.  This was not Sachs' conclusion but mine.   Grant's New York Times essay actually makes a good case for not trusting those who prepare themselves to be president.  

How would the executive office work with sortition?  I would suggest that rather than selecting  a single president, an executive council of a good sized number be selected.  As with all offices, staggered short, non-consecutive terms for the members would ensure continuity in leadership and in the projects and preoccupations of government  while avoiding entrenchment.  One function of the executive council would be the building of a pool of expertise from which to be informed about the concerns of the presidency.  The mechanics would be for the council to decide-- my purpose is to demonstrate how the selection of executives from among ourselves could with very little imagination improve upon the highly politicized and constrained possibilities of an elected executive.

Thanks are due to Adam Grant and the New York Times for a provocative introduction to an alternative politics.  Let's hope this is not the end of the discussion.