The Case For Sortition

06 Mar 2020

When thinking of the most purest form of democracy most people will point to direct democracy, allowing the public to directly vote on policy. And as I have written before this is something socialists should full heartedly support. Athenian democracy comes to mind usually when thinking about this topic, but the real heart of the system is often left out. Central to the Athenian system was random selection of legislative and judicial bodies. This system of random selection, or selection by lot, was considered essential to democracy by it’s earliest theorists.

“The rule of the people has the fairest name of all, equality (isonomia), and does none of the things that a monarch does. The lot determines offices, power is held accountable, and deliberation is conducted in public.” – Herodotus

Aristotle considered elections to be oligarchic. Elections had ordinary people voting for the people considered to be the best to rule over them. This selection of people considered to be the best always favored those in the upper classes, and this is still true today.

“It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election.” – Aristotle

The problems of elected representatives show themselves clearly today in America’s political system. Elections are heavily dependent on the money funding the campaigns, and we can see now if you have enough money you can just buy your way into an election without campaigning as evidenced by Michael Bloomberg. This pressure to raise money is obviously influential on candidates policies favoring big money capitalists rather than working people.

Elected representatives rarely represent the will of the people on major issues as evidenced by public support for policies like Medicare for All, higher taxation on the wealthy, free public education from childcare up to college, higher minimum wages. These elected politicians go around in circles trying to appease donors and lobbyist, lying to the public and voting on bills that hurt the American people only to point to the process that makes them do these things.

The reality is that those who are chosen to represent the American people, overwhelmingly do not represent the American people. What is the class make up congress versus the American public? What is the gender make up of congress versus the American public? What is the racial make up of congress versus the American public? Does anybody really believe that public officials understand the problems everyday people face?

In order to give ordinary people power, legislative bodies should be chosen by lot. Randomly selected people, given short terms and paid a rate at or slightly above an average skilled workers, should fill the bodies that form local, state and federal governments. These should be working bodies, legislative and executive, only checked by citizen veto by popular vote or a citizen’s jury in a court case. This idea may seem alien and maybe even undemocratic to people familiar with and electoral system, but it in fact solves many problems created by elected representatives and allows for much more power to the average individual.

First of all, sortition is applied statistics towards solving the problem of representatives in a large society. A randomly selected body will statistically look like the body it was chosen from in terms of class, race, age, gender etc. This would allow people for people of all backgrounds to be represented in decision making processes, making decisions with all interests in mind.

It would also make it near impossible for big money to influence the process. If big corporations wanted to influence legislators they would have to influence the whole public. With the legislators being unknown before their selection, and the constantly changing faces in the legislature due to short terms and staggered rotation of selection, they would have to be constantly spending large sums of money on buying out a majority of the current legislature as well as every new one that phases in.

Large groups of randomly selected people tend to be make good, informed, and balanced decisions, and often better than small, focused groups of experts. This was a concept understood even by Aristotle which he termed “the virtue of the multitude”. The diversity of problem solving techniques, frames of reference, and prior experience involved in randomly selected groups can outweigh the benefits of selecting for high knowledge, especially since these groups tend towards static solutions. Of course debate, and deliberation have a huge part to play in this and expert knowledge is welcomed in the course of this. But the role should be limited to exposing the current scientific stances of professionals and their pros and cons.

Recently, experiments with sortition are being done with much success. Citizen’s redistricting boards have become a somewhat popular idea, with California successfully creating one in 2010. 14 citizens were randomly selected(5 Republican, 5 Democrat, 4 No party preference) to redraw district lines for California’s elections. We have since seen many more highly competitive districts, with many incumbents resigning and new faces in office. Ireland’s “Irish Citizen’s Assembly” was successful in investigating public support for repealing an abortion ban, and after deliberation voted 66% in favor of repealing. This issue was sent to the people to vote on and passed, amending the constitution to legalize abortion. They also met again recently and made several recommendations to the state on climate issues. Although these are small steps, they show a way ordinary people can be involved in the decisions that effect their lives, and that they can make good decisions despite what some people might be inclined to say.

Without the working class in direct control of the state, enacting a socialist program is an exercise in futility. The fullest democracy imaginable will have to be realized and as socialists we must focus on decreasing the powers of elected bourgeois representatives and increasing the powers of ordinary people through randomly selected democratic working bodies.(And just as importantly, The Right To Referendum And Initiative At All Levels Of Government)