[EM] sortition/random legislature Was: Re: language/framingquibble

[Terry Bouricius]

I am interested in Aaron's comment on a risk of sortition along these 
lines...
"Managing your own affairs is for adults; having your desires catered to 
without effort on your part is for spoiled children."
I am sympathetic to this argument. I favor a society in which as many 
people as possible are engaged in thinking, debating, advocating about the 
way their society will function, rather than passively receiving 
direction. I am not convinced either candidate or party-based elections, 
in which voters every year or so place a mark on a ballot really achieve 
this. However, I can also imagine sortition being done is a very bad 
way -- where an anonymous distant sortition authority simply informs the 
people of decisions --- like "the Provider" on the old Star Trek TV show.

Instead, I would imagine that sortition-formed bodies should be more akin 
to sampled citizen assemblies, and be common-place, short-term and narrow 
focus, such that every person would serve on numerous sortition bodies 
over a lifetime. Rather than appealing to powerful elected officials for 
policy change, citizens would need to spread their ideas through the 
general public, not knowing who might be temporarily "in power" on their 
particular issue of concern next year. Thus public debate, letters to the 
editor and Blog commentaries, etc. become more significant under this form 
of sortition.

Not unlike jury duty, I would think by default everybody would be subject 
to selection (maybe not even limited to those over 18). However, those who 
feel they are unsuitable should probably be able to either be excused, or 
select a friend or family member to go in their place. The compensation 
would need to be adequate, but not huge to remove money as a consideration 
for most people. I don't favor an opt-IN approach (where people need to 
volunteer to get into the lottery), because I know of many people who 
would be ideal legislators, but who don't have the ego-mania to consider 
themselves in that light.

I also share Aaron's concern about a bureaucracy controlling the agenda 
and flow of information to the sortition bodies. Perhaps groups or 
individuals could petition to put items or proposals before sortition 
bodies, so the bureaucracy does not have a monopoly. The higher the level 
(national vs. municipal), the more signatures needed to convene a 
sortition body on a particular matter or place an item on their agenda.

Terry Bouricius

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Raph Frank" <raphfrk at gmail.com>
To: <eutychus_slept at yahoo.com>
Cc: <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 7:30 PM
Subject: Re: [EM] sortition/random legislature Was: Re: 
language/framingquibble


On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 8:53 PM, Aaron Armitage
<eutychus_slept at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I don't think I expressed my point clearly enough: I consider that 
> making
> the public the active agents in their own governance is a very major
> benefit of popular government. THE benefit, in fact.

However, most of the power rests with the legislators.  We already
delegate the power to people who will then make decisions for us.

What about if only voters got to be selected.  You have to go to the
polling station and 'vote' in order to be eligible for selection.

> Increasing the
> percentage of majority policy preferences enacted, in such a way as to
> make the people passive consumers of policy rather than at least
> potentially the producers forfeits the reason for having popular
> government. Managing your own affairs is for adults; having your desires
> catered to without effort on your part is for spoiled children.

Is the issue here is that if the legislature is selected at random,
there is no requirement for the voters to become informed about the
issues?

In the unlikely event that some gets picked, they then can actually
bother to get informed.

A two House solution seems to help with that though, you still need to
know what is happening in order to pick the elected house.

>
> I'm not especially afraid that legislators chosen by sortition would be
> corrupt, although if they can be reelected as you suggest they would
> become corrupt at close to the same rate that politicians do now, and 
> for
> the same reasons. I do think that in practice the agenda would be set by
> the permanent staffers and facilitators, and depending on who they are 
> and
> how effective they are at framing the issues the result may end up not
> being very democratic at all.

I am not sure I agree.  The vote of confidence would cover just one
person.  Since a challenger can't control who will replace the
legislator, there is less incentive to spend lots of money.
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