Sortition and Other Delights

Democracy is not elections, politicians are not your friends

In my relatively brief lifetime as an American citizen I have observed a lot of Change, a few Political Revolutions, a Third Way, a Resistance, and many other New things. Despite all of it, the dominant political mood today appears to be one of deterioration, stagnation, or frustration, a sense that our leaders are failing us. The proposed solution is invariably: swap them out! And so we seesaw from the Lesser and Greater Evils until they blur together and the whole thing, rightly or not, just starts to look plain Evil.  

There has been Change; but of the kind that happens unconsciously, carried by momentum, off a cliff. The change enacted by inaction. What I never see pass the lips of our self-selected representatives is a whiff of a desire for structural change, anything that would negatively impact their power and prestige. This is hardly surprising, and why I am skeptical of even the most well-meaning campaigners. People change. They become molded by their environment, become the thing they most despise.

People can of course change for the better. They rise to an occasion, surprise themselves. There is a lot lying dormant in all of us. And government, at least the American one I know best, rarely offers an occasion to rise to. To directly participate in our state, one must claw their way to the top, an unsavory activity not accessible or even desirable for most people, who usually want an unassuming, comfortable existence in which the contents of their email inbox are not a national concern. Yes, we can vote, rally for candidates, call our representatives, maybe be an unpaid intern for one. You could even run for local office, though this often reproduces the same dysfunctional national dynamics in miniature.

In a country of 330 million people, it is ludicrous to think that 535 individuals in Congress, and a hundred or so in each state legislature, could meaningfully represent the almost unimaginable diversity of opinions and personal experiences of the population. It is a physical impossibility. The inevitable consequence is that legislators become out of touch with everyone except those who helped them get up there, and the electorate becomes apathetic and jaded as they realize they’re being ignored. Those that remain engaged are the diehards and  professional operatives who follow the minutiae of elections like so many horse races. This goes on and on while our collective crises fester unaddressed.

The cynic in me would finish here, and go for a walk. This is why until now I’ve rarely published any of my rants — no one loves a complainer. But lately I have discovered a germ of hope, verging on unabashed optimism, for a movement that could finally offer a meaningful alternative to the insanity sketched out above. I am speaking of sortition.

Sortition is a simple concept with revolutionary implications.  It means the selection of government representatives from among the whole population by lottery, rather than elections. This allows a very different politics to emerge, in which there is no distinction between government and the governed. When used properly, a sortition mechanism can be weighted to ensure the broadest possible cross-section of people has an equal chance at being called up. Such an ordered randomness reduces factionalism and fosters a genuine diversity of life experiences, personality types, and opinions in government. Yet it’s not enough to just draw straws for Congress and hope for the best – new institutional forms are required in tandem. 

America, as a democratic republic, was explicitly designed to keep most people out of the halls of power except for elite white men; and while we have succeeded in opening up their offices to a wider spectrum of humanity, they retain their paternalistic character, their exclusivity, a certain “we know what’s best for you.” Sortition is more than a technical amendment. It signifies a fundamental shift in one’s attitude towards themselves and the nature of the state they inhabit. This is why it’s not an accident that sortition has never been taken seriously in America outside of jury duty (which, while often complained about, almost everyone does satisfactorily when asked). Sortition is the bedrock of an actual democracy, one that has faith in its citizens to manage their own affairs, not just show up half-heartedly to the polls every few years. That it sounds so idealistic, perhaps even terrifying, to picture the average person wielding power justly and effectively shows how much our political imagination has been warped by deference to charismatic egoists and the ‘Experts.’ 

They will never give us sortition. We must build it for ourselves. 

But build what? I don’t claim to be an expert on this, just a zealous convert. The best solution I’ve encountered so far is the widespread adoption of citizens’ assemblies to deliberate and pass resolutions on matters of public concern. These already exist in many countries, mostly in Europe, and are sometimes officially sanctioned by the government but often begin as a grassroots effort. Assemblies derive their authority from the fairness of the selection process (i.e sortition) and what actually happens when they meet. If you just call up a fairly-selected sample group to ask them their existing opinion on arcane policy details, most would draw a blank. It would seem to prove the elite prejudice that average people aren’t equipped for the complexities of modern technocratic government. 

In order to work, citizens’ assemblies must be deliberative; that is, the issue(s) at hand are extensively researched, discussed, and voted on until the group can put forth a consensus recommendation or something close to it. It’s expected that during this process individuals’ opinions will shift as they learn more about the topic and hear from their peers. Ordinary citizens are much more likely to care about policy specifics if they feel their thinking actually has bearing on the outcome. They also have less incentive to sabotage that outcome on behalf of special interests. Again, our current jury system proves that people can usually come to an agreement on crucial matters if they feel they have to. They don’t always get it right, but who would prefer to be tried without one? 

To date, the most consequential citizens’ assemblies have arguably been focused, temporary measures convened to discuss a particular issue, whose recommendations are then voted on in a referendum or sent up to conventional government. For example, Ireland voted to legalize gay marriage and abortion after citizens’ assemblies concluded it was the right decision, a significant change for a historically conservative Catholic country. And after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans used deliberative assemblies in each neighborhood to create a comprehensive recovery plan for the city, which was promptly enacted. 

Citizens’ assemblies are also slowly becoming institutionalized. Last year Paris became the first major city to adopt a permanent Citizens Council chosen by sortition, with the power to propose laws, budgets, and other agenda items for the elected city council. This followed a similar measure in the Belgian region of Ostbelgien, whose parliament voted in 2019 to create a sortition-based local government model in which a permanent Citizens Council, consisting of 24 people serving 18-month terms, commission and oversee temporary citizens’ assemblies discussing individual issues. 

I’ve never personally attended a citizens’ assembly. They don’t seem to happen often in the US. Perhaps they are boring and ineffectual, like many of the other toothless ‘people power’ type-things I’ve attended in the past. But something about the idea makes me feel otherwise. In the course of learning about them, I’ve been struck by the hopeful, excited language used by sortition advocates, and the sophistication of assembly recommendations. They present a genuine third way in politics, a road not taken that leads away from partisan clichés and toward authentic engagement in pressing issues. 

Despite widespread apathy there is still a palpable desire among the population to do something about the state of our country, for one’s opinions to matter. We have better access to information than at any point in history, yet very few opportunities to actually employ it productively. Without a real-world context for our indignation, online platforms become the only viable outlet for many. This feeling must be harnessed and organized or else it will continue to dissipate into the digital ether, or boil over in the streets. The increasing inability of Red and Blue America to speak to each other, let alone work together, is nurtured in the current environment of media siloes and self-segregation of the country into politically homogeneous zones. 

The fracture will only deepen without a concerted effort to overcome it, and that effort has to be credibly nonpartisan. If there’s one thing almost all Americans can agree on, it’s that politicians generally suck and elections breed conflict. Congressional approval ratings have been in the toilet for years. This presents a uniquely promising possibility of citizens’ assemblies; causing people with divergent viewpoints, who may view each other as the enemy, to spend hours in the same room deliberating on something relevant to their community they may not have a ‘script’ for yet. Even in the aforementioned siloes I doubt public opinion is as monolithic as we generally assume.

I could certainly imagine a perversion of the assembly process in which members band together based on their prior partisan affiliations, and try to fight the culture war instead of attending to the task at hand. That is no reason not to try it. While undoubtedly one or two wingnuts would find their way in through sortition, I believe that social decorum would carry the day and help assembly members to recover a sense of solidarity with people they disagree with, which our current political process discourages. At the very least, it would provide a visceral experience of the disunity we’re currently experiencing in our political culture and a meaningful forum in which to address it. 

For my part, I have resolved to use this newsletter to think through the complexities of sortition-based assemblies and the possibility of creating one in America today. This writing represents my first attempt at being a cheerleader for this unfairly neglected solution hiding in plain sight. It is admittedly not the sexiest topic at first blush. Sortition asks more of us than we are used to giving, with an uncertain chance of success. Reversing the gravitational pull of apathy and despair will not be easy. However, the goal is nothing less than the freedom we are told is our birthright.