More Modern Sortition

From "The Trouble With Elections: Everything We Thought We Knew About Democracy is Wrong," Chapter 14.3

Citizens gather at the Government Palace on February 14 and 15, 2023, to participate in a National Deliberative Poll. Citizens deliberate on possible constitutional amendments. Photo courtesy of the State Great Khural

Following the momentous British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly, a similar sortition assembly, also looking at election reform, was empaneled in Ontario in 2006. After extensive study and deliberation, this citizens’ assembly recommended a Mixed Member Proportional system for the province. However, in the ensuing referendum, which was held in conjunction with the regular election, Assembly members complained of inadequate general voter education about the relatively complex reform proposal, and the plan was rejected by the voters in the 2007 referendum. While education and deliberation by average citizens in the Citizens’ Assembly led to a decision in favor of a system of proportional representation for parliamentary elections, rational ignorance resulted, as usual, in an electorate that lacked an understanding of the pros and cons of what they were voting on. It appears that most voters simply followed the lead of politicians from their preferred political party. Only the NDP and Green Parties, which together garnered under 25 percent of the vote, formally endorsed the reform proposal. In British Columbia, none of the political parties formally endorsed that proposal, so it may have lacked the partisan flavor of Ontario’s election.

Also in 2006, a Netherlands' Citizens' Assembly (Burgerforum) was established by sortition to advise the parliament on election reform as well. This panel proposed maintaining the existing system of proportional representation, but reforming some details of the election law, which were subsequently passed by the parliament. The proliferation of sortition had begun.

In 2009-2010, in response to the economic crisis of 2008 an Icelandic civics organization with the eventual endorsement of the national government sponsored a randomly selected forum to address constitutional revisions. In 2011-2012 an innovative and grand sortition implementation known as G1000 took place in Belgium in response to the partisan electoral stalemate in that country. Again, this was initiated outside of government. More than 700 randomly selected citizens attended a summit, and thousands more participated online and in other ways. The final report contained concrete proposals on issues such as employment policy, and garnered substantial media attention, notice from politicians, and general interest in this deliberative model. Support for sortition within Belgium grew rapidly.

In Ireland the government convened a Constitutional Convention, with 66 out of its 100 members chosen by lot, to discuss possible amendments. The Convention met from December, 2012 through March, 2014. Like most of the other citizen assemblies it was granted only an advisory role, with the government not bound to accept its recommendations. The government failed to respond to the Convention’s recommendations by the proposed deadline, suggesting the government clearly saw the Convention as ancillary. But one particular item that emerged from the Constitutional Convention was the proposal to legalize same-sex marriage, which was put to a national referendum in 2015 — which passed by a wide margin (62 percent in favor.) A deeply Catholic country, it seems unlikely such a proposal could have been enacted so soon if left to cautious politicians. The fact that this was the first time in the world that a country had adopted same-sex marriage through a referendum was widely reported. But was less well known, but perhaps more fundamental was that this marked the first time a national constitution had been amended based on recommendations of a convention primarily drawn by lot.

In 2011 the Citizens Jury model of Ned Crosby was institutionalized in the state of Oregon, USA. The government adopted a law establishing a Citizens’ Initiative Review Commission. Under this law, prior to each statewide referendum on a proposal initiated by petition, the Commission can appoint a Review Panel of between 18 and 24 people. The Commission uses random sampling methods, stratified according to various demographic factors to assure representativeness, to select the members of each panel. Each Review Panel meets for five days, studies the ballot measure, hears from supporters and opponents, and issues a report of their findings, which is published in the voter guide that is made available to all voters. Such reports typically present a majority report and a minority report summarizing the reasons some participants were for and others against the proposal at the end of the deliberation. These reports are obviously just advisory, with the referendum voters having the final say. In the initial run in 2012, it appears that most voters did not read, or even know about, this guidance, but awareness has grown in subsequent referendums. This sortition model of deliberative advice leading up to a referendum was also used in the Valsamoggia region of Italy in dealing with a proposed amalgamation of five municipalities.

Variants of the citizens’ assembly and citizens jury were not the only sortition models that began to spread. A model similar to the German Planning Cells, called a “consensus conference” was developed in Denmark in the 1980’s. It is used specifically for issues of new technology, where it was recognized that policy implications extend outside the technological realm (such as genetically modified food and electronic surveillance). The goal was to open the debate beyond just technology experts and politicians. These Danish consensus conferences invited a random sample of Danes with no particular technological background to read and hear presentations from a range of experts and issue findings to help guide government policy. The Danish Board of Technology invites two-thousand randomly selected residents to participate, and from those who step forward, the Board selects a demographically representative group (in terms of age, gender, employment and geographic residence) of between fourteen and sixteen participants. After a couple of educational preparatory weekend sessions, the participants engage in an intense four-day deliberation in which they ask questions of expert witnesses on different sides of the issue and draft a final report, which is provided to policy makers and members of parliament. This model has been replicated in Holland, England, France, Switzerland, Norway, Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea and Israel. 

In 1987, another political scientist, James Fishkin of Stanford University,  developed the concept of deliberative  polling. In summary, the deliberative opinion poll works like this: A statistically representative random sample of people is surveyed on some public policy question. The respondents then are given “carefully balanced” background materials to read before being gathered to listen to a series of presentations by competing experts. They develop questions for the experts in small group discussions to clarify their understanding, but do not directly debate among themselves. Finally participants are surveyed again to see how their opinions change. As Fishkin contends that the changes in opinion reflect the changes and conclusions that the public in general would reach, if people had the opportunity and motivation to become better informed and more engaged.

Participants are paid for their time, and may need to travel and be put up in hotels, so this isn’t cheap. Fishkin and colleagues have received funding from a variety of governmental and non-governmental organizations to conduct many such deliberative polls around the world. One high visibility deliberative poll in Brussels in 2007 was billed as “Europe in One Room.” A 362-member representative sample from all twenty-seven EU countries gathered to deliberate on public policies such as European pensions and retirement. The product of this deliberation was informative but had no binding effect. 

In China, in 2008, Fishkin and colleagues implemented an effectively binding deliberative poll to decide on infrastructure investments in Zeguo Township in Wenling City. Government officials committed to fund the projects favored by a representative random sample of households. By sampling households, instead of adults, a male bias was introduced as most households chose to have a male member participate. But this bias was nowhere near as extreme as that of the party and government. The goal was to avoid any appearance of corruption, and gauge public support for 30 different projects, including bridges, roads, schools, sewage treatment plants, community gardens, etc. Party and government officials were pleasantly surprised by the results of the public deliberation. According to Fishkin and colleagues, 

“Jiang Zhaohua, the Zeguo Town party secretary, expected neither the high ratings for sewage treatment and other environmental projects nor the low ratings for ‘image’ or road projects. … More generally, he was surprised at the difference between the local leadership’s perception of what the people would want and what they actually wanted after deliberating.”

The use of democratic sortition within a non-democratic government system creates interesting discomfiture in terms of democratic ideals. As Jiang Zhaohua noted, 

“Although I gave up some final decision-making power, we gain more power back because the process has increased the legitimacy for the choice of priority projects and created public transparency in the public policy decision-making process. Public policy is therefore more easily implemented.”

A number of other jurisdictions followed suit and invited Fishkin to conduct several additional deliberative polls in China. In 2017, the nation of Mongolia adopted a law requiring this method of in-person deliberative polling, using a large random sample of citizens, to review any proposed constitutional amendments. The second implementation took place in 2023.

However, the citizens’ assembly model of sortition has been implemented many hundreds of times around the world in the past couple of decades