
The lottocracy: It’s time to start choosing representatives by lottery (2014) - dredmorbius
https://aeon.co/essays/forget-voting-it-s-time-to-start-choosing-our-leaders-by-lottery
======
sitkack
Almost anyone who wants the job is by definition unqualified. A random choice
will perform better than what we have now.

~~~
dredmorbius
There's that, but far more.

Another _Aeon_ article -- the best article I've read in the past decade --
explores the notion of random choice also: " How to choose? When your reasons
are worse than useless, sometimes the most rational choice is a random stab in
the dark " [https://aeon.co/essays/if-you-can-t-choose-wisely-choose-
ran...](https://aeon.co/essays/if-you-can-t-choose-wisely-choose-randomly)

(I'd also submitted that, I think it's much the better essay.)

A key element is that if you elect by _lot_ , as the Greeks did, _voting is
not a deterministic process_. That is, the candidate(s) with more votes are
more _likely_ to win, but only on a probabalistic basis. Athens didn't count
votes, it _drew lots_ (or _ballotta_ \-- small clay balls with a candidate's
name written on it). The candidate pool itself was qualified (and
exclusionary, patriarchal, and discriminatory, yes), but given that 10-20% of
the population were potential candidates, and the ruling cohort might be
entirely different in the near future, getting along with whomever was, or was
not, in power was good career- (and life-) extending move.

This in addition to bias, manipulation, and other problem elimination.

I've got issues with some of the suggestions here. The idea, for example of
electing domain-specific single-issue legislatures, might tend to create other
forms of ossified structures (think of domain specialisation, academic
specialisation, and the like). Having _generalist_ legislatures can be a very
good thing.

But that's a detail. The notion of sortition should get more play.

