Sortition

There is a great book on that matter: Against Elections: The Case for Democracy from David Van Reybrouck It argues that it would be better and more democratic to randomly sample parliament instead of voting. It also describes how a transition could look like and how mixed systems could work. The biggest issue I see is that such a system would need a very strong and well-designed bureaucracy and very well educated and moral public servants. You would have a…

I've thought a bit about sortition. My favourite way of explaining it: Suppose a billionaire is looking for someone to marry. They want a partner who is interested in them for more than just a paycheque. Say gold-diggers represent just a very small fraction of the population but are extremely good at feigning fascination in pursuit of their goals and finding themselves in the company of billionaires. In fact they are so good at ingratiating themselves with billionaires that any…

I believe sortition is far from optimal, but would still probably function better than the current way we select our senate and congress in the US.