If you think that sounds anti-democratic, think again. The ancient Greeks invented democracy, and in Athens many government officials were selected through sortition — a random lottery from a pool of candidates. In the United States, we already use a version of a lottery to select jurors. What if we did the same with mayors, governors, legislators, justices and even presidents?
Other countries have begun to see the promise of sortition. Two decades ago, Canadian provinces and the Dutch government started using sortition to create citizens’ assemblies that generated ideas for improving democracy. In the past few years, the French, British and German governments have run lotteries to select citizens to work on climate change policies. Ireland tried a hybrid model, gathering 33 politicians and 66 randomly chosen citizens for its 2012 constitutional convention. In Bolivia, the nonprofit Democracy in Practice works with schools to replace student council elections with lotteries. Instead of elevating the usual suspects, it welcomes a wider range of students to lead and solve real problems in their schools and their communities.
I have no illusions this is possible on the federal level, but at the local (and perhaps state) level, it would be an interesting experiment. — Mikie
So, is it worth a shot? — Mikie
Right, in MA towns below a certain size have to do the town meeting. It works better than you might expect but not great. I was almost the town administrator for a town that had an open meeting and select board. — Count Timothy von Icarus
My primary concern is that a non-expert might not make good decisions concerning a policy. My related concern is that an extremist would make decisions inconsistent with the majority. — NotAristotle
Towns are governed by a Board of Selectmen and a Town Meeting. — T Clark
In some larger towns that becomes unwieldy so they started using representative town meetings with members selected by lottery from a pool of applicants. — T Clark
Masshole — Mikie
T Clark, have you ever in the past, do you now, and might you in the future think of yourself as a "masshole"? — BC
Did you make it up (kudos if you did) or is it in common usage? — BC
I was just checking and it says that town meeting members in those cases are elected, not chosen by lottery, so I was wrong. — T Clark
But that’s happening already. Trump was hardly an expert in anything, and pretty extreme.
Take a look at the republican candidates. Good lord. Politics is almost like survival of the dumbest. — Mikie
Voting is a virtue of our democracy and randomizing officials rather than electing them would undermine the democratic process, preventing citizens from voting according to what they think is best. If you take away voting, you severely curtail the ability of people to participate in the political process and you disconnect politics from the will of the people. — NotAristotle
People expect leaders chosen at random to be less effective than those picked systematically. But in multiple experiments led by the psychologist Alexander Haslam, the opposite held true. Groups actually made smarter decisions when leaders were chosen at random than when they were elected by a group or chosen based on leadership skill.
Why were randomly chosen leaders more effective? They led more democratically. “Systematically selected leaders can undermine group goals,” Dr. Haslam and his colleagues suggest, because they have a tendency to “assert their personal superiority.” When you’re anointed by the group, it can quickly go to your head: I’m the chosen one.
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