American politics is stuck. We’ve just had the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, politicians turn crises into culture wars, and elected officials spend more time chasing donors than solving problems. For voters, it feels like being on a plane where the pilot chose a different destination than the one on our ticket.
Elections clearly aren’t representing us the way they should.
Ian Troesoyer, of the nonprofit Democracy Without Elections, believes sortition could help fix that. It’s already being used to decide major issues without politicians — from abortion in Ireland to charter reform in Los Angeles.
For voters trapped between two parties, big donors, and a shrinking sense of control, sortition offers a different starting point: let everyday people decide what to do.
What Is Sortition? Random Selection in Democracy Explained
At its core, sortition is a bet on ordinary people. The belief: if you pull a fair, representative random sample of the public, give them time, support, and good information, they can make decisions at least as well as professional politicians — and often better.
Troesoyer defines it as “the idea of applying statistics to the scale problem of democracy.” Instead of using elections to elevate “elite middlemen” who claim to represent everyone else, sortition takes a representative sample of the people and asks them, through deliberation and consensus building, to make policy decisions directly.
“So it’s democracy without politicians,” he says.
How sortition actually works, in practice and in history:
- It tackles scale by sampling, not by filtering. Elections try to manage a big population by picking a tiny, elite layer of winners. Sortition says: choose a group that statistically mirrors the whole community, then let them work.
- It has deep democratic roots. “Ancient Athenian democracy… used sortition,” Troesoyer notes. Elections were reserved for narrow roles, like generals with specific military expertise. Everyday governing roles were filled “by lot,” using a physical randomization device called a kleroterion — an ancient, analog Powerball machine for democracy.
It never fully disappeared. Sortition crops up in different places throughout history — and elements of the same logic (e.g. random selection) powered the development of juries in multiple places. “You’re looking for a fair process that’s going to try to minimize bias and also try to reflect the community’s values,” Troesoyer says.
Indeed, the most familiar modern cousin to sortition is the jury system. It’s not a perfect comparison — modern juries are small, and processes like voir dire let lawyers quietly strip out jurors based on race, class, and sex — but the intuition is the same: to get fairness, you don’t need a ballot. You need a fair draw from the community and a structured process.
In a sortition-based democracy, that logic moves from the courthouse to the legislature. Instead of asking which politician should speak for us, the question becomes: which representative cross-section of us will do the work this time?
Are Elections Aristocratic? How Our System Favors Elites
Americans are raised to treat elections as synonymous with democracy. But Troesoyer notes that elections are anything but neutral. They structurally favor the wealthy, the well-connected, and the loud.
“The conception of elections is that everybody has equal access to vote,” Troesoyer says. “But does everyone have equal access to run? And the answer is of course not.”
How elections structurally filter out most people:
- Time is the first barrier. People who have to work or care give simply don’t have the free hours it takes to mount a campaign. That alone knocks huge chunks of the population out of contention.
- Money is the second choke point. Long before voters see a ballot, there’s an “invisible primary” — the period when potential candidates chase donors and media attention. Debate stages and serious coverage “are all about how much money have you raised and what sort of name recognition do you have,” Troesoyer notes. “Money can pay for name recognition and money can pay for popularity early on in a race.”
The result is that you end up with an elite caste as the only options for voting — regardless of which party or policies they are affiliated with. That ultimately means less diversity and choice when it comes to values, policies, and representation.
Elections “work entirely against people who work or care give or who are not wealthy or well connected,” Troesoyer says. Unless work and caregiving are optional, your odds of being “electorally viable” sink.
The problem isn’t just contemporary. Troesoyer points back to Aristotle, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, who drew a sharp line between democracy and aristocracy. In their view, “it’s in the nature of democracy to select decision makers by lot, and it’s the nature of aristocracy or oligarchy to select decision makers based on election.”
Elections and elites even “share a historical root word,” he notes. Historically, elections weren’t democratic at all. Monarchies used them to “select our betters” for advisory councils and parliaments — boards of notables that would “make our decisions for us.”
I personally can’t help but recall high school lessons about how, in the early United States, most Americans couldn’t vote — only white wealthy landowners. Troesoyer notes that this history lines up with the framers’ own writings, which overflow with “negative things about democracy.”
If elections were truly democratic, Troesoyer asks, why would self-described critics of democracy choose them as their core tool?
Sortition isn’t an abstract fix for this. It’s a direct inversion. Instead of making it harder for working people, caregivers, renters, and low-income folks to serve, random selection starts from them. The question stops being “who can afford to run?” and becomes “how do we design a draw that really looks like our community?”
Citizens’ Assemblies in Practice: How Sortition Works on the Ground
While sortition sounds great on paper, the real question is: What does this look like in reality?
Troesoyer points to a growing body of “citizens’ assemblies” — multi-day or multi-week processes where randomly selected residents learn, deliberate, and recommend policies. Most of them are advisory rather than binding. For him, the key is that they’ve already cleared the basic test: the results “seem at least as good as what we get from politicians.”
How a typical citizens’ assembly works:
- Organizers cast a wide net. They might send mailers to 10,000 or more people explaining that a group will meet over several months, often on weekends, and asking: “Would you be willing to participate?”
- Participation is supported, not punished. “In order to include people… in the most democratic and fair way, you need to give people paid time off of work and pay them to participate,” Troesoyer stresses. Childcare and flexible scheduling round out the picture so people with jobs and caregiving responsibilities can say yes. “That’s critical. And the best processes have all done that.”
- The sample is stratified, not random-chaotic. From the people who respond, organizers use stratified random sampling. They deliberately match the group to the population by gender, age, income, race, and sometimes geography.
- Over time, mandatory panels may make sense. For advisory pilot projects, voluntary samples work. But when a final body is deciding whether a policy becomes law, Troesoyer suggests a shift to something more like jury duty, so people who say “no, I’m too busy” don’t disappear from the sample entirely.
That last point takes Troesoyer into a hard trade-off. Mandatory service feels “kind of coercive,” he admits. But “living under laws is coercive.” If we’re going to minimize coercion, he argues, we “might as well do it in the stage where we’re actually making the laws” rather than forcing people to follow them after the fact.
I, for one, find this refreshingly honest and pragmatic. It seems logical that living in a stable society requires some amount of coercion on some group or another — whether through law enforcement, protests, coalition-building, boycotts, etc.
If we must have coercion somewhere, I would much rather coerce everyday folks into taking part in making laws that actually reflect their wants and needs — versus handing that off to a bunch of elites who have no interest in representing us, and who ultimately coerce us into following laws we don’t want or benefit from.
The citizens’ assembly model offers something refreshingly concrete. It doesn’t promise perfection, but it does promise a process designed, from the ground up, to reflect real people and reduce the gaps between law and lived reality.
Personality Types, Power, and Fair Representation in Democracy
Elections don’t just filter for money and time. They filter for personality.
Winning elections often favors type A personalities — extroverts who are hyper-competitive and willing to screw over others to get to the top. I’d argue that capitalist societies, in general, are almost optimized for this. If you look at the head of most companies, you will find someone with a type A personality.
It’s no coincidence that the bulk of our government – from local to federal government — is disproportionately full of CEOs, business owners, lawyers, realtors, and the like. Ultimately, I think this builds “echo chambers” and dysfunction, because the people elected don’t necessarily want to listen to people who are actually equipped to solve our problems. They think they have all the answers, know what’s best for us, and can do it on their own.
Troesoyer doesn’t dispute this. He notes that elections select for narcissistic and even sociopathic traits. “Not saying that all politicians are sociopaths or narcissists,” he clarifies, but “there’s a higher proportion of them among elected officials than there are among the general population.” He cites an oft-quoted line as additional proof of what he means: “people who seek power are not the people who you want wielding power.”
How sortition shifts that mix:
- It pulls in personality types elections miss. For instance, there is a fair amount of research suggesting that better leadership actually often comes from type B and C personalities. These are people who rank higher in emotional intelligence, are more introverted, listen instead of talk, are more empathetic, and are better equipped to see the big picture and connect dots. These people may not be able to “sell” themselves as well as a type A personality, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have leadership skills. And in a sortition system, they don’t have to out-campaign anyone to end up at the table.
- It breaks professional monocultures. In a government that is so saturated with business people, this is huge. Under sortition, citizens assemblies and other groups aren’t going to be all business owners. They are going to be made up of a broad swathe of people from a variety of fields, industries, positions, and seniority.
- It doesn’t rely on self-promotion. Random selection doesn’t reward the loudest voice or the slickest brand. It simply seeks to represent the populace.
For voters, the outcome is straightforward. Under sortition, decisions can be shaped by a cross-section of temperament and experience, not by whoever is most aggressive, wealthy, or wired into donor networks. That doesn’t guarantee kindness or competence in every individual — but it makes the whole group more likely to reflect the range of people who actually live under the laws.
Executives vs. Legislatures in a Sortition-Based System
So what happens to Congress, mayors, and presidents in a sortition system? Does random selection replace everything?
Troesoyer draws a sharp line between executives and legislatures. For the executive branch — mayors, governors, presidents — he’s clear: You still need people with special experience and skills. You can’t randomly select someone who’s going to have management, finance, and policy skills in the same way that you could randomly select decision makers.
How he imagines the split:
- Executives as specialists, vetted deeply. Elections might still pick executives, or you might have like an election-by-jury model, where a large panel conducts thorough job interviews for each candidate, checking that they actually have the skills they claim.
- Ongoing performance reviews by sortition juries. Troesoyer suggests new randomly selected panels every year, empowered to evaluate whether an executive is “effectively implementing the will of the people” in an ethical way. If yes, they keep their job. If not, they don’t.
- Legislatures as value bodies, chosen by lot. Policy questions — how much money to allocate to X instead of Y, which groups to prioritize — are “value decisions,” not matters with a “technically correct answer.” For those, Troesoyer argues, it “really does not make sense to have experts making our value decisions for us.” Instead, those should be made by citizens’ assemblies selected by sortition.
This structure addresses a common fear: that random selection will hand nuclear codes to the next person pulled off a bus. It doesn’t. Sortition’s sweet spot is values and trade-offs; executives and technical experts remain crucial, but they implement rather than define the people’s goals.
The bigger promise is cultural. Legislators elected under the current system are punished for compromise — anything that looks like “flip-flopping.” But a randomly selected assembly that doesn’t need re-election can chase consensus without fear. “It’s all about value,” Troesoyer says. Instead of endless partisan bickering, sortition assemblies can find the best compromise that they themselves can live with.
Parallel Citizens’ Assemblies & Catching Democracy Up to Reality
Here’s a question: If citizens’ assemblies work for single issues, why stop at one? After all, there’s only so many laws that politicians can get to in a given day, month, year, or term. In contrast, by building citizens’ assemblies focused on different laws or decisions, you could advance anything and everything at the same time.
Sortition opens up something our current system struggles with: keeping the law in sync with a fast-moving world. You could run 100 different 100-person panels — each focused on a different law or policy. In a country of roughly 330 million people, parallel panels advancing legislation at a far quicker pace than our current legislatures can aren’t just possible; they’re logical.
Troesoyer agrees. “Yeah, absolutely, you can run multiple of these in parallel,” he replies.
Parallel sortition panels offer a structural way to catch up:
- One assembly could review privacy laws for new technologies.
- Another could revisit obsolete statutes that no longer match social norms.
- A third could tackle complex, long-stalled issues like housing or healthcare.
Multiple panels, running side by side, means lawmaking can move at the speed of reality instead of the speed of overburdened octogenarians who are more interested in their re-election campaigns than sound policy.
Education, Experts, and Humility in Citizens’ Assemblies
Critics of sortition often jump to the same concern: how can “random people” make decisions on complex issues? Troesoyer starts by puncturing the idea that elections solve this.
Politicians “don’t have expertise necessarily in anything other than public relations,” he says. “You need to be a good bullshit artist… selling the image of yourself as like, ‘yep, I can lead.’” The one skill you must prove is that you can “talk a good game.”
In reality, everyone relies on subject-matter experts. The question is who sits on top. Here, Troesoyer cites political theorist Hélène Landemore: “experts should be on tap, but not on top.” You “hire the pilot to fly the plane,” but “you’re not gonna let the pilot pick the destination.” The passengers — i.e., the people — should choose where to go.
How citizens’ assemblies build informed judgment:
- They blend general education with lived experience. There’s some “groundwork” on how the law works and on the issue at stake, but the goal “is really not so much a process of just listening to experts.” Experts can be wrong too.
- Participants help choose who they hear from. In “the best versions” of sortition processes, organizers bring in “a well-published expert,” but the group also gets to say who they want to hear from. That pulls in diverse perspectives and prevents any one institution from gatekeeping the conversation.
- The real work is mindset. Becoming informed, Troesoyer argues, is about “opening our mind to the possibility that we are wrong” and then “hearing different perspectives” to build “the best working synthesis that we can.”
He points to Ireland’s abortion citizens’ assembly as a vivid example. Ireland had a strict constitutional ban on abortion that was causing real harm, but politicians, closely tied to the Catholic Church, wouldn’t touch it. Under rising public pressure, they convened a randomly selected assembly.
Members heard from physicians, legal experts, people who’d had abortions, and people who opposed change. Many said they “did go in with my preconceived notions” but “wasn’t sure I was right.” After hearing stories and evidence they’d never encountered, they crafted a compromise that Irish voters then “overwhelmingly approved.”
Compare that to election logic. As Troesoyer notes, you can’t run for office saying, “I might be wrong about this. Send me [more info] and I’ll learn about the issue and I’ll come up with some compromise.” Voters are trained to look for certainty. Sortition flips that script. People chosen “not due to your merits, but totally at random” feel the “humility of that situation,” he says. That humility is the foundation for real learning.
Lived Experience vs. Agenda — and How Sortition Decouples the Two
Fostering this humility and learning mindset are something I feel very strongly about. In Logan’s recent mayoral race, I supported a candidate with a stronger agenda but less conventional experience. A critic told me they preferred the rival because of “more experience,” and accused me of trying to make myself feel better for voting for someone who’s inexperienced.
But experience in the wrong things is not a virtue. Any candidate can lean on experts, ask the questions that need to be asked, collaborate with city council members, and lean on workers who handle the day-to-day running of government. Getting down to it, why would I want someone who’s experienced in the wrong things? The agenda is the whole point.
Troesoyer extends the logic. Under elections, voters are forced to buy a package deal:
- A policy agenda they may like or hate.
- A personality they may find abrasive or inspiring.
- A set of management skills they can only guess at.
In practice, Troesoyer notes, that means choosing between a candidate “with the agenda that I like, who I think is a bit of an ass” but might be a strong manager, and someone more agreeable with weaker ideas. For roles like mayor, where “you need to have good personnel management skills,” that trade-off can be brutal.
Sortition offers a structural way to decouple these pieces. Citizens’ assemblies handle the agenda — the values and policies the community wants. Executives, chosen and re-evaluated through rigorous “election by jury” processes, handle management.
By separating who decides what we want from who is best positioned to carry it out, we can more easily build systems that actually work for people at scale.
Democracy Without Elections & the Los Angeles Charter Win
Sortition isn’t just a philosophy for Troesoyer. It’s his day job. Democracy Without Elections (DWE) began in the late 2010s as a chapter of the international Sortition Foundation. It’s now an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit with chapters “all over the place,” still small but active.
One of its most concrete victories comes from Los Angeles.
The city council has been in turmoil after a council member was recorded making racist and “unfortunate” comments, sparking wider scrutiny of “corrupt insider deals” and deep mistrust of city government. Pressure built for “charter reform” — a rewrite of the city’s foundational governing document (essentially its constitution).
DWE’s local chapter, Public Democracy LA (PDLA), seized that moment. They advocated for a sortition process to guide the rewrite. The result: “one of the most powerful cities in the United States is going to be using a sortition process to update their charter,” Troesoyer says. “And that’s a huge win.”
For the movement, the impact runs in two directions:
- It creates real policy change. A randomly selected body will now help decide the shape of Los Angeles’ government, with all the downstream effects on budget, policing, housing, and more.
- It builds familiarity and expertise. “The more experience and the more familiarity that regular people have with it,” Troesoyer notes, “the more expertise and the more enthusiasm we can bring to bear on the problem of like, how do we scale this up?”
For frustrated voters watching from elsewhere, the Los Angeles case offers something rare in democracy reform: proof that a sortition process can have a serious impact on the rules of a major city — not just bolted on as a one-off consultation on a single issue.
How to Start Locally: Hot Potatoes & Conflicts of Interest
So how do you get from one city’s charter to broader change?
Troesoyer notes a consistent pattern in places where sortition gets a chance to shine. In places where sortition has been tried with real power, it’s usually because politicians had “a messy issue that they did not want to deal with.”
Two categories of issues make strong targets:
- “Political hot potatoes.” In Ireland, it was abortion — an issue politicians were stuck on, under heavy pressure from both the public and the Catholic Church. In France, President Emmanuel Macron’s carbon tax triggered the Yellow Vest protests because it hit “poorer people, working class people who are using their cars” much harder than wealthy people living near city centers. In both cases, leaders faced problems they couldn’t resolve cleanly through normal partisan channels.
- Direct conflicts of interest. Topics like redistricting, campaign-finance rules, and term limits put politicians in the position of “writing the rules for themselves.” On those, Troesoyer argues, “a randomly selected group of the people is really the best choice.”
The pitch to local officials, he says, is simple and pragmatic:
- This is a “thorny issue” you don’t want on your desk.
- A sortition-based assembly lets you “wash your hands of this issue and let the people decide.”
- You can still look like a hero for creating a fair, community-driven process.
“It’s useful to approach politicians as their ally,” Troesoyer suggests — someone offering “a win for you” and “good policy” for the public at the same time.
For people who want to help each other and help themselves — without waiting for a perfect Congress — this is the ground level: find the hot potatoes and conflicts of interest in your city or state, then organize to offer citizens’ assemblies as a credible, concrete alternative.
Constitutional Reform & the People’s Jury Convention Model
All of this raises a hard question: can sortition reach the constitutional level in the United States? Troesoyer doesn’t sugar-coat it. “I wish there was an easier path,” he says. “All the paths to that goal are incredibly difficult.”
He walks through the two options already in the Constitution:
- The “typical” congressional amendment path. Two-thirds of the House and Senate must approve an amendment. Then three-quarters of the states must ratify it, either through legislatures or state-level conventions. Troesoyer notes there are “huge super majority thresholds” at both stages.
- An Article V convention. This route — never yet used — kicks in if two-thirds of state legislatures call for a constitutional convention. Legal scholars disagree on whether that convention could be restricted to specific topics. Troesoyer notes that some groups want a narrow convention, while critics fear a “runaway” process that might threaten the Bill of Rights. Still, any amendments that come out of it must be ratified by three-quarters of the states, just like the normal path.
Where Democracy Without Elections comes in is at the state level. The Constitution allows ratification either by legislatures or by state conventions, but doesn’t define what those conventions are. DWE has drafted model legislation so that, in a given state, those “conventions” would be large sortition bodies — “500 randomly selected people” who hear arguments for and against each amendment and then decide by a private vote.
Troesoyer imagines a recurring “people’s jury convention” or “people’s sortition convention” tasked with regular constitutional updates. That would:
- Bring clarity to gray areas that now fuel extreme interpretations.
- Let large, representative samples of the public decide whether to overturn decisions like Citizens United, change voting methods, or adjust other structural rules.
- Continue making adjustments “until we have a system that large representative random samples of the people say like, ‘yeah, actually, I don’t think we can do any better than this.’”
Politically, he sees the most plausible path running through partisan primaries, especially in states dominated by one party. State legislative seats “are easier to flip than House seats or Senate seats.” In many districts, turning out a few thousand primary voters around a clear pledge — to call for a sortition-based convention — could be enough to elect candidates who will put that process in motion.
It’s not a quick fix. But it’s a specific route from today’s existential despair over a centuries-accumulating constitutional crisis to a future where constitutional change is a people-led, recurring part of democratic life.
How to Get Involved in Sortition & Learn More
You don’t have to be fully sold on sortition to join the conversation. That’s one of Troesoyer’s final points.
“If this is an interesting idea to you and you would like to talk about it with people, or maybe you have a different perspective,” Democracy Without Elections wants to hear from you. “I was convinced of sortition,” he explains, through his own process of questioning his assumptions about voting systems.
He started out volunteering with election-reform groups focused on ranked-choice and approval voting. After listening to others, looking at evidence, and keeping his “mind open to potentially being wrong,” sortition “just like clicked.” As an epidemiologist, he already worked with “representative random samples” in public health. Applying that same logic to democracy suddenly made sense.
Concrete ways to plug in:
- Join Democracy Without Elections. They have chapters in multiple places and are open to people at every stage — from curious skeptics to committed organizers.
- Drop into their Discord. “You can just chat with us without having to become a member or signing up for our email list,” Troesoyer notes. It’s a space to ask questions, raise concerns, or even try to change minds.
- Read The Trouble with Elections by Terry Bouricius. Troesoyer calls it “a fantastic free book about sortition” that covers “the history and the psychology and mechanics of sortition versus politicians.” It’s currently available on Substack.
The Promise of Sortition for a Better America
The promise running through this conversation is simple — and it shouldn’t be radical: We don’t have to accept donor-driven, personality-driven elections as the only way to govern ourselves.
Sortition offers a different path. It centers rotating cross-sections of the public — workers, caregivers, quiet types, loud types, people with different incomes and backgrounds. All the while, they are supported by experts “on tap, not on top,” and freed from the pressure to win an election.
From criminal juries to citizens’ assemblies in Ireland, France, and now Los Angeles, we already have proof that sortition works. Ordinary people, chosen fairly and supported well, can handle big questions with more empathy, nuance, and practicality than campaign cycles allow.
If you’re tired of shutdowns, partisan trench warfare, and constitutional brinkmanship, there’s a concrete next move. Step into the sortition movement by connecting with Democracy Without Elections. Join their Discord, find a local chapter, and read The Trouble with Elections. Then, help start or support a citizens’ assembly campaign where you live.
Whatever you think of sortition today, make sure to get more involved in your local state and national politics either way. Work toward policies that uplift and empower people. Foster a growth mindset. And make sure that you always put people before country, and country before party.
Frequently Asked Questions About Sortition
Q: What problem is sortition trying to solve?
A: The problem with American politics. Elections are donor-driven and personality-driven, politicians often ignore crises or turn them into culture wars, and voters feel like powerless passengers while elites choose a different destination than what was promised. Sortition is a way to better represent everyday Americans over using elections to choose elite middle-men for representation.
Q: What is sortition?
A: Sortition is the use of random selection to choose decision-makers from a fair, representative cross-section of the public, then supporting them with time, pay, childcare, and good information so they can deliberate and make policy decisions directly.
Q: How is sortition different from elections?
A: Elections filter for people with time, money, connections, and self-promotional skills, producing an elite political class. Sortition inverts this by starting with ordinary people — workers, caregivers, renters, homeowners, quiet types, loud types — and selecting them by lot to reflect the community statistically.
Q: Why are elections aristocratic?
A: Historically elections were used to select “our betters” for advisory roles, not to express democracy. Elections structurally favor the wealthy and well-connected, making them more aristocratic than democratic.
Q: Isn’t choosing people at random risky or naive?
A: We already trust random selection for serious decisions in jury duty. With sortition, the key is not pure randomness but stratified sampling (matching the population on age, gender, income, race, etc.) plus structured processes and expert input.
Q: What is a citizens’ assembly, and how does it work?
A: A citizens’ assembly is a multi-day or multi-week process where a randomly selected, demographically representative group of residents learns about an issue, hears from experts and stakeholders, deliberates, and then issues recommendations — often with pay and other material support to make participation possible.
Q: Does sortition change who ends up in power?
A: Yes. Elections tend to elevate type A, highly competitive personalities and professional elites like CEOs, lawyers, and business owners. Sortition brings in a broader mix of personality types and professions, including more emotionally intelligent, introverted, and empathetic people who wouldn’t normally run for office.
Q: Does sortition replace presidents, governors, or mayors?
A: Executives (like mayors or presidents) are still needed for specialized management and technical skills, which might come through elections or intense “election-by-jury” style vetting. Sortition is best used for legislatures and value-based decisions about laws and budgets.
Q: What are “parallel citizens’ assemblies”?
A: Instead of one overburdened legislature trying to handle everything, sortition allows many assemblies to run at once — each focused on different laws or policy areas (e.g., privacy, outdated statutes, housing, healthcare) — so lawmaking can catch up with a fast-changing world.
Q: How do experts fit into sortition-based democracy?
A: Experts are “on tap, not on top.” Citizens’ assemblies receive educational briefings and hear from specialists, but participants help choose who they hear from and ultimately synthesize the information themselves, rather than handing final decisions to technical elites.
Q: What’s the role of humility in this model?
A: Because participants are chosen randomly, not for their charisma or ambition, they often enter the process aware they might be wrong. This humility and openness to learning is a deep contrast from election campaigns, where candidates are rewarded for projecting certainty.
Q: What is Democracy Without Elections (DWE)?
A: Democracy Without Elections is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that grew out of the Sortition Foundation. It has chapters in multiple places and works to promote sortition-based democracy, including supporting real-world projects like the Los Angeles charter reform process.
Q: What happened with sortition and charter reform in Los Angeles?
A: After racist comments and “corrupt insider deals” on the city council fueled mistrust, pressure grew for charter reform. DWE’s local chapter, Public Democracy LA, successfully pushed for a sortition-based process so a randomly selected body will help rewrite Los Angeles’ governing charter.
Q: How could sortition be used for U.S. constitutional reform?
A: Using existing Article V pathways, but specifying “state conventions” as large sortition-based “people’s jury conventions” of randomly selected citizens, sortition panels could vote on proposed constitutional amendments after hearing arguments for and against.
Q: What types of issues are good candidates for citizens’ assemblies?
A: Two big categories are “political hot potatoes” (like abortion in Ireland or climate-related taxes in France) and issues where politicians have a direct conflict of interest (like redistricting, campaign finance, or term limits).
Q: How can someone get involved with sortition efforts?
A: Check out Democracy Without Elections, join their Discord to discuss and ask questions, and read The Trouble with Elections by Terry Bouricius — while also getting more engaged in local, state, and national politics in general.
Q: What’s the bottom-line promise of sortition?
A: Sortition says we don’t have to accept donor-driven, personality-driven elections as the only way to govern. By empowering representative groups of ordinary people, supported by experts but free from re-election pressures, we can craft laws that better reflect real lives and values.