Examples Of Sortition

Freedom of Representation—Sortition

The freedom to representation guarantees that citizens will be free to have their views represented in whatever group makes decisions about national laws or budgets. Deciding who will represent the views of the people, whether it is a group or an independent leader, often creates conflict. Elected representatives are vulnerable to corruption, bribery, and bias. Sortition, or selection by lottery, protects the legitimacy of the election process and ultimately allows for a more truthful representation of the people. Examples from history and contemporary politics have proven that sortition is a practical and impartial system of voting that should be integrated into any new society and its constitution.
It appears we resort, or have resorted, to lottery, or sortition, for allocating organ transplants, judicial case assignments, tax audits, hunting licenses, military service, and jury pools, among others. For most, allocation by sortition seems to be available as a tie-breaking device. It is brought forth when two or more people have equal claims to a scarce good or service that cannot be divided among them by appealing to other allocation mechanisms (DeNardis 20, 2011). This idea of a tiebreak, when two people having equal claims to a good or service, could essentially be the solution to the conflict we have with political parties now. Both parties have equal claims that their way is the right way. Rather than electing representatives from these two polarized ruling parties and allowing gridlock, a lot could be used to vary the pool of representatives. Because of well-known statistical characteristics of large numbers, the views of members of Congress would correspond much more accurately with the views of the whole population than those of our present congressmen do. Once in Congress, members would be free, as they are today, to "vote their consciences." But those consciences would be typical, average consciences, rather than the atrophied consciences of dedicated power-seekers (Moore 39). In this way a lottery selection is impervious to bribery, intimidation,
Holders of the most important offices, the archonships, were selected from a short list (probably one hundred) preselected candidates of the two highest classes of citizens. After about 460 B.C., all four classes of citizens were eligible for archonship (Knag 1, 1998). Clearly, this system was prejudiced. A similar system of pre-selection could be integrated into a contemporary lot, but it would be based on a citizen’s hard work and achievement, rather than their class or social status. This way any self-motivated and reputable person could be a potential candidate, regardless of race, gender, or income-class. This would perform a valuable service by keeping such objectionable prejudices out of the election process (Steele 665, 1995). Although, this would still not guarantee a fair election in which every citizen had equal opportunity of being elected. Ultimately, there is no simple solution or test to use when choosing the potential