The Sortition Option is a website with links to information on choosing government officials using lotteries. Here’s an excerpt from its introduction.

“Sortition, or selection by lot, from the Latin sortiri, has a long history of use, going back to the ancient Solonian Constitution of Athens, and serving the Republic of Venice well for 1,000 years. Today it is mainly used for the selection of juries, but the abuses of the electoral process, resulting from the need for candidates to raise large sums of money from donors who expect something in return, and the politicization of the appointment or election of judges, makes it appropriate to consider amending constitutions and laws to make more use of various forms of sortition.”

A Citizen Legislature is a short book by Ernest Callenbach and Michael Phillips. Its text is posted on the internet. Here’s the book’s description followed by an excerpt:

“Americans are worried about Congress, and they are right to worry. The founding fathers intended Congress to be representative of all Americans — ‘a portrait of the people in miniature.’ But today 95% of its members are still white, male, property-owners, almost half of them lawyers. Congressmembers receive over $300,000,000 in campaign contributions, and their votes follow the demands of the wealthy sources that provide these funds. As one observer in Washington puts it, we now live in a ‘special interest state.’ Congress is not doing the job it was established to do. Many reformers recognize this threat, but solutions that only deal with campaign spending have failed to reach the root of the problem. Now there is a scientific way to select legislators so they will be truly representative. This process worked for the ancient Greeks over more than two centuries. We can make it work in our society today. We can vote it in, using the people’s initiative powers on the state level as a start. This book tells how our new system will operate, how it will fit into the existing American governmental structure, and how it will restore a direct, powerful voice in Washington to the whole of America.”

“It happens that there is an easy and even inexpensive way to choose representatives for a legislative body so that they would in fact be a ‘transcript’ of the whole society:  sortition, or selection by lottery, which was used by the Athenians to choose representatives for two centuries. The time has come to examine this type of direct representation as a possible way to bring the whole people’s voice to Washington. We have changed our notions of what constitutes proper representation many times in American history. Voting rights in the original thirteen states could be exercised only by free, white, propertied men; it was not until 1860 that property requirements were generally struck down, and in the form of poll taxes they persisted in some states until 1965. Freed black slaves theoretically received the vote in 1870. Women were not given the right to vote until 1920. The Voting Rights Act, which provided effective access to the ballot for blacks, came only in 1965. Eighteen-year-olds have voted only since 1971. It is well within the power of the American people, acting either through the amendment process or through a constitutional convention (especially if one should be called to consider the proposed balanced budget amendment) to revise our method of selecting representatives.”

Random Selection in Politics is a book by Professor Lyn Carson and Professor Brian Martin. Here’s an excerpt from the book’s introduction.

“Government by elected representatives is taught in schools and presented in the media as the natural way of doing things. Powerfully legitimized by the ideas of mandate and merit, representatives elected under this system consider that the electorate has given them a mandate to govern, while bureaucrats consider that merit and expertise justify their role in a powerful decision-making elite. Representative government obviously is a great improvement over previous systems of rule, such as feudalism, autocracy, and dictatorship; but nevertheless it is a system of rule in which citizens have relatively little impact on a day-to-day basis.”

“Representative government has its limitations. It concentrates power in a parliament or congress, and the elected representatives can become vulnerable to vested interests. The voters are given responsibility only for opinion formation, not decision-making, and the representatives who make the decisions have low accountability. These and other problems are inevitable in representative government because it is a system in which a small number of people — politicians and high-level bureaucrats — have a great deal of power that can be exercised to serve powerful interests, including their own interests.”

“Most people attribute problems with representative government to individual politicians and specific policies. A standard assumption is that if the right people could be elected and the correct policies implemented, then everything would be okay. But the problems go much deeper.”

“We want to step aside from a belief in the ideas of mandate and merit as rationales for governance, since they are used to stymie efforts to foster greater citizen participation. We suggest instead a different foundation for fostering participation and diffusing power:  random selection.”

“The assumption behind random selection in politics is that just about anyone who wishes to be involved in decision making is capable of making a useful contribution, and that the fairest way to ensure that everyone has such an opportunity is to give them an equal chance to be involved. Random selection worked in ancient Athens. It works today to select juries and has proved, through many practical experiments, that it can work well to deal with policy issues.”

“Random selection can be used to promote both small-scale and large-scale political participation, from a tiny exercise in street improvement to a national electoral system. Like election, it needs to be used sensibly, with appropriate controls to ensure best operation.”

Let’s Toss for It:  A Surprising Curb on Political Greed is a research paper by Sigmund Knag. Here’s an excerpt:

“Nowadays elections are almost universally regarded as the keystone of political affairs. Besides paying taxes and perhaps serving in the military, average citizens participate in political life mainly by voting. Although people disagree about election procedures and often feel disgust with election outcomes, hardly anyone today doubts that elections provide the only way to establish, legitimize, and control a government. Historically, however, general elections have been the exception rather than the rule for selecting and guiding governments. Alternatives include various autocratic or despotic systems and processes and, in more democratic systems, methods that supplement or substitute for elections. Among the latter is lot-drawing, also known as sortition (from the Latin root sort, meaning ‘lot’). This procedure has intriguing characteristics and effects as well as potential for present-day utility. In this article, I discuss its history and nature and consider some possible applications in the American political system.”

Organizations Selecting People:  How the Process Could be Made Fairer by the Appropriate Use of Lotteries is a research paper by Conall Boyle that was published in The Statistician. Mr. Boyle also has a website with internet links to examples of lotteries that are successfully used by governments and organizations around the world. Here’s a summary of the paper.

“Organizations select people to receive benefits in a way which is efficient to them but may not be fair to those selected or rejected. This paper elaborates on the concept of fairness — that it should be efficient, not waste the efforts of the candidates; that it should treat as equals all those who are not measurably different; that the process of selection should avoid bias and corruption. Lotteries have been used in the past partly to avoid corruption. Some examples of lottery-type selection remain today, such as juries. This paper examines the case for the deliberate introduction of a lottery as part of the selection process to approximate to the uncertainty in measuring the merits of candidates. The advantages of such a lottery, particularly where decisions are devolved down to the community level, are discussed. Keywords:  efficiency; fairness; lottery; organizational selection processes; random selection.”

Demarchy:  The Ideal Democracy is a research paper by Kevin Albrecht on choosing officials using lotteries. Here’s an excerpt.

“In a demarchy, however, the governing bodies form a hierarchy based on issues. These bodies are called policy juries or functional groups (also known as consensus councils, planning cells, or citizens’ juries). Each community will have policy juries whose job it is to study come to decisions on particular topics. For example, a small community may have policy juries on street maintenance, water supply, and business development. The members of a policy jury are determined by random selection from the community at large to serve a set term, not dissimilar to the term of elected officials in a representative democracy. At the end of each member’s term, they return to the community as a normal citizen.

These policy juries act in a way very similar to the way court juries act in civil and criminal court cases. Both are formed similarly, by random selection from the community at large. The policy jury, like a court jury, hears testimony from expert witnesses on the topic being investigated. After the jury feels it has enough information to make a decision, it votes on the topic and comes to a conclusion on the best course of action to take.”

Sortition is an on-line article in the open source encyclopedia Wikipedia. Here's an excerpt:

“Sortition (also known as allotment) is a fair method of selection by some form of lottery such as drawing coloured pebbles from a bag. It is used particularly to allot decision makers. In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was the primary method for appointing officials, a system that was thought to be one of the principal characteristics of democracy. It is today commonly used to select jurors in Anglo-Saxon based legal systems.”

“Fairness & Equality. Sortition is inherently fair in that it ensures all citizens have an equal chance of entering office irrespective of any bias in society and implies an equal society where there is no meaningful difference between all the members of the society, which would make one more suitable than another.”

“Democratic. Almost all Greek writers who mention democracy (including Aristotle, Plato, and Herodotus) both emphasize the role of selection by lot or state outright that being allotted is more democratic than elections. For example, Aristotle says: ‘It is thought to be democratic for the offices to be assigned by lot, for them to be elected is oligarchic.’ We see the same idea in the 18th century after the re-emergence of democracy in the writings of Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu: ‘The suffrage by lot is natural to democracy, as that by choice is to aristocracy.’”

“Less corruptible than elections because processes can be developed to ensure that selection is completely fair. For example, Athenians used complex allotment procedures with complicated machine to allot officers. Like Athenian democrats, critics of electoral politics in the 21st century argue that the process of election by vote is subject to manipulation by money and other powerful forces; and because legislative elections give power to a few powerful groups they are believed to be less democratic system than selection by lot from amongst the population.”

Casting and Drawing Lots:  A Time Honoured Way of Dealing with Uncertainty and for Ensuring Fairness is a research paper by William A. Silverman and Iain Chalmers. It’s posted on the internet and it’s available as a free pdf download. Here's an excerpt:

“The lot causeth disputes to cease, and it decideth between the mighty.”

– Proverbs 18:18.

“Casting lots for Divination.  The Hebrew bible makes a number of references to lots. For example, Jonah declared ‘Let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us’; and the whole book of Esther is the story of Purim, which means ‘lots.’ Although the masses were forbidden by Jewish law to cast lots for divination — which was the prerogative of the priests — God’s authorities on earth were allowed to use lottery devices to guide judgements. Thus the chief priest carried sacred stones inside his breastplate, through which he sensed divine intentions. The stones gave God’s answer, determined when the ‘Yes’ or the ‘No’ stone was drawn out. King David consulted this oracular medium before going into battle:  when the ‘Yes’ stone appeared, forecasting his victory over the Philistines, he set off on the warpath. Although the early fathers of the Christian church were vigorously opposed to divination by lots, sometimes excommunicating those who practised it, this did not stop the Church itself using this method for decision-making. For example, in 782 CE, when the bishops of Poitiers, Autun, and Arras all claimed the body of St. Leger, lots were cast, with the result that the saintly remains were handed over to the Bishop of Poitiers.”

“Lottery Versus Authority and Fallible Human Judgement. In the past, the results of drawing lots were considered to reflect divine guidance. Today the results are more likely to be regarded as reflecting the play of chance. Lotteries to decide which citizens shall risk their lives in defence of their countries have been accepted as a fair, democratic solution to a problem of difficult choices. Lots for the 1917 military draft in the United States were drawn in public, in the presence of the President and other dignitaries, by a blindfolded Secretary of State. The words of the US Secretary of the War Department capture its essence: ‘This is an occasion of great dignity and some solemnity. It represents the first application of a principle believed by many of us to be thoroughly democratic, equal, and fair in selecting soldiers to defend the national honor abroad and at home.’”

“Drawing Lots to Ensure Fairness. Whether or not divine intervention is invoked as the mechanism through which the casting of lots leads to decisions, the method has been recognised for millennia as a way of ensuring fairness in deciding difficult matters. Thus, the land of Canaan was distributed among the tribes of Israel by lots (‘And ye shall inherit the land by lot according to your families.’ – Numbers 33.54). Sometimes lots have been used to deal with particularly dire circumstances. When it became apparent in 73 CE that the zealot Jewish soldiers at Masada could not survive, they drew lots to select the ten men who would carry out the mass suicide. The immediate survivors of shipwrecks have also had to take life or death decisions in attempts to ensure that at least some of them would able to return home alive.”

Take A Seat At The Table (TASATT) is a pro-democracy organization in the United States. Here's an excerpt from its website at www.tasatt.org.

“Take a Seat at the Table is a movement to organize citizens neighborhood by neighborhood, community by community, to take back politics from the partisans. There is a national movement to register Independent and we encourage you to join the newly formed Independent Party of Oregon (IPO). Many we have talked to say that they want to maintain their Democratic (or Republican) registration so they can vote in the primary election. Fine. But if we are to impress on the parties that they no longer represent us — our interests and our issues — then withdrawing and registering Independent will send the message most clearly. (Changing registration from non-affiliated to Independent also gives those voters an opportunity to vote in the primary.)”

“Political parties have proven they cannot reform themselves, because it is not in their best interest to abandon the agendas of the controlling elite.”

“Take a Seat at the Table intends to demonstrate that those who are frustrated with the political system are not alone and are not powerless. By being aware of each other, we can share information, support one another, develop grassroots leaders, and influence public policy.”

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead

The Society for Democracy including Random Selection (SDRS) is pro-democracy organization in the United Kingdom. It offers a free on-line newsletter called Sortition.

Here’s an excerpt from its website at www.sortition.org.uk:

“The sole aims of the SDRS are as follows:  first, the promotion of random selection as a complementary method of election; secondly, to facilitate political and cultural understanding between persons who share this democratic aspiration.”

“The genesis of the SDRS may be traced to 1994. That year, the Labour Committee on Democratic Accountability of Secret Services (LCDASS) held a fringe meeting at the Labour party conference and proposed that organisations constituted to monitor the activities of the secret services should incorporate the principle that some of their members be chosen by random selection from the general electorate, similar to the way in which juries are selected. The use of random selection in the appointment of these bodies is the best method to ensure that influences of political factionalism do not jeopardise the impartiality or operational security of the intelligence services. The problem of factionalism is however not confined to the question of intelligence oversight:  it also affects virtually the entire representative democratic system. Against this background, the LCDASS advocated the promotion of the Athenian form of democracy — random selection not only as a method of selecting juries, but also as a general, complementary method for electing democratic representatives, including members of parliament. Constitutional reforms facilitating this purpose could also serve the ultimate purpose of incorporating the use of random selection in regard to oversight of the intelligence services.”

“In 1998, Anthony Barnett, a Senior Research Fellow at London University, wrote a pamphlet in connection with the ongoing reform of the House of Lords entitled The Athenian Option, in which he advocated random selection as a method of election to the new upper chamber. At the Labour conference held in September that year, the LCDASS hosted a fringe meeting to promote this proposal with speakers including Anthony Barnett, the former deputy leader of the Labour party Roy Hattersley, and the Guardian journalist and author Jonathan Freedland. Throughout 1999 and 2000, the LCDASS organised and conducted a series of focus group meetings using canvassing methods incorporating the principle of random selection to find out how the general public would respond to this proposed constitutional reform for the House of Lords.”

“Most of those who attended these meetings approved of the use of random selection as a means to elect some peers to the newly reformed upper chamber. They also agreed that an organisation should be formed to promote random selection as a complementary form of election; and in June 2000, the inaugural meeting of the SDRS took place comprised mainly of those individuals who had been contacted using random canvassing methods. That is why, even though a Labour party organisation was involved in the formation of the SDRS, most of its members are not in the Labour party and it is correspondingly independent of any political party. The SDRS incorporates random selection methods in its own internal practices and constitution. Canvassing methods undertaken by the SDRS also incorporate random selection techniques.”