The future of California democracy? Look no further than Petaluma | Hacker News Reader

The future of California democracy? Look no further than Petaluma

sfchronicle.com

7 pointsdredmorbius9 comments

The process involves sortition, as an alternative to direct-voting for candidates as is far more familiar in most Western democracies. There are institutions which share elements of this, such as grand juries, which can serve not only to hear criminal indictments but which may be empaneled for other civic purposes as well.

There's an absolutely excellent and illuminating Aeon essay from nearly a decade ago which covers this idea and its history (with references to several more detailed references), "How to Choose" --- When you can't choose wisely, choose randomly, by Michael Schulson, first published in 2014.

The citizen's assembly in Petlauma, and Healthy Democracy, seem to be adopting lessons illustrated in that piece.

You thought it was hard to have fair elections, just wait until you have a lottery to choose the oligarchs.

A key point with sortition is that it's far more difficult to game the outcome.

Who's included within the candidate pool matters, but even if that is oligarchs:

1. Oligarchs as a group have some aligned interests, but compete even amongst themselves.

2. So long as the underlying process itself is fair, rising to power in any one period will a) likely include representation from other factions and b) be a temporary state of affairs for which reprisals from an unfair officiation would be likely.

These suggest that a sufficiently aware group would exhibit some temperance in office. It also means that long-term partisanship should be somewhat less likely and durable.

So, you're secretary of state. You run a "lottery" where you pick people to have power. Shockingly, all-but-one of the ruling council comes from your team. Now, your team runs everything. Even if your team would only win 3% or 5% or 10% of the vote, the rest of the population can do nothing, because the process is entirely non-democratic and citizens have no say. The next "lottery" date comes up and, whaddaya know, the same team wins again, because even if you retire as Secretary of State, who do you think the ruling council picks? Surely not someone from the other team.

Say you're not the secretary of state.

What operational principles would assure you that the process isn't corrupt?

Keep in mind that:

- The game repeats. There will be other draws, as I mentioned in my initial comment. A corrupted process will work against the interests of the despotic as well as for.

- The process can be structured so that there is no single point of control. Ballot-counting operates on the same principle, and there are multiple checks applied to help assure that the process is fair, including polling judges, ballot examination, recounts, etc. That process is still subject to gaming through methods such as voting roll purges, access to voter registration, voting methods (in person vs. mail), district boundaries, false advertising, intimidation, and outright violence.

Keep in mind that a party bent on subverting a process can subvert any process, and that adherence to the principle of elections themselves. What a sortition process does is do away with systemic control, particularly by a narrow minority, and complete exclusion of minority viewpoints. It's not going to work against a determined internal or external enemy bent on subverting the process no matter what, but then, no other process would either.

Again, the Aeon piece I've linked goes into detail on this, and I strongly recommend reading it.

Mind-mush strikes again.

That should read "adherence to the principle of elections themselves remains necessary".

Point being that any governance system fails where this doesn't exist or cannot be imposed.

Interesting article, but I'm getting a 403 Forbidden. The archived link works.

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